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Drink

Mint Punch

Mint Punch is a chilled beverage made with mint, lemon juice, sugar, ice, and ginger ale.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,998 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mint Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the punch

  1. Place the bruised mint in a punch bowl.

  2. Fill half the bowl with finely chopped ice.

  3. Add the juice of 5 lemons.

  4. Add ½ cup of dissolved sugar.

  5. Pour in 2 bottles of ginger ale.

Chill and serve

  1. Refrigerate for 2 hours to chill and allow flavors to meld.

  2. Sweeten to taste before serving.

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.

  1. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mint + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mint
Bruising releases aromatic oils that flavor the punch.
Lemon juice
Provides sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and blends evenly once dissolved.
Ginger ale
Adds sparkle and ginger flavor along with extra sweetness.
Ice
Chills the punch and dilutes it slightly as it melts.

The step that matters

Pour in the ginger ale. Carbonation escapes quickly when the liquid is stirred hard or left exposed, so pour the ginger ale gently to keep the punch fizzy.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, ginger):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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