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Deerfield Spiced Punch

A spiced punch made with tomato juice, sugar, spices, lemon, candied ginger, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Deerfield Spiced Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced base

  1. Heat the tomato juice and sugar in a pot until boiling.

  2. Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and coriander seeds.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture into a pitcher.

Finish the punch

  1. Add the lemon juice, candied ginger, and cold water to taste.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomato juice
Forms the liquid base and gives the punch its body and mild acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the tomato juice and lemon.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, woody aroma and spice flavor to the punch.
Cloves
Contribute strong aromatic spice flavor that infuses into the liquid while it stands.
Candied ginger
Adds sweet, sharp spice and a chewy bite to the finished punch.
Lemon juice
Brightens the punch with acidity that cuts through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Letting the spices stand for 2 hours. Whole spices release their aroma and flavor slowly into the hot liquid, so a shorter rest gives a weak, flat punch. Straining only after the full rest captures that infused flavor.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, coriander, lemon, 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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