Name: Watermelon Punch
Ingredients: 1 watermelon; 4 tablespoons claret or Madeira wine; pulverized sugar

Why it works: Madeira wine and sugar work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 343 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Watermelon Punch

Ingredients

1 watermelon
4 tablespoons claret or Madeira wine
pulverized sugar

Directions

Prepare

Cut balls from the center of the watermelon using a potato scoop.
Pile the watermelon balls in a pyramid in glasses.
Pour 2 tablespoons of claret or Madeira wine over the fruit in each glass.
Chill thoroughly.

Serve

Before serving, dust with pulverized sugar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Madeira wine + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together343 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Watermelon: Provides the fruit base, with juicy flesh that soaks up the wine.
Claret or madeira wine: Adds flavor and acidity that complement the sweet watermelon.
Pulverized sugar: Adds sweetness to the finished punch.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.