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Punch À LA Romaine Au Rhum

A sweet and citrusy rum punch made with rum, sugar, water, lemon, orange, and pineapple juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Punch À LA Romaine Au Rhum

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the punch

  1. In a large pitcher, combine the rum, sugar, and water. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Add the lemon juice, orange juice, and pineapple juice. Mix well.

  3. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve over ice cubes in glasses.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Rum + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Rum + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rum
Provides the alcoholic base and most of the punch's warm, deep flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the sourness of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the drink and offsets the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness and fresh citrus aroma.
Pineapple juice
Adds sweet tropical fruit flavor and body to the punch.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture for at least 1 hour. Chilling lets the rum, sugar and juices blend fully, so the flavors taste integrated rather than separate. A fully cold punch also means the ice added at serving dilutes it more slowly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rum, sugar, orange, pineapple):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, sugar, orange, pineapple. 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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