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Simple Gin Punch

A refreshing gin punch made with powdered sugar, lemon juice, boiling water, and Old Tom gin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Simple Gin Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small bowl, combine the powdered sugar and a few drops of lemon juice.

  2. Add the lemon juice and pour in 1 quart of boiling water.

  3. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  4. Mix in 1½ quarts of Old Tom gin.

  5. Top off with another quart of boiling water.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + gintop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + gintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the liquid to provide sweetness that balances the lemon's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and offsets the sweetness of the sugar.
Boiling water
Dissolves the sugar and dilutes the gin to a drinkable strength.
Old tom gin
Provides the main spirit base and its botanical aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully before adding the gin. Undissolved powdered sugar settles to the bottom, leaving the punch unevenly sweet. Stirring until it dissolves gives a consistent sweetness throughout the drink.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Orangefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gin. 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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