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Iced Gin Punch

A chilled cocktail made with gin, sugar, lemon juice, maraschino, kirschwasser, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Iced Gin Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar in a bowl with the iced water.

  2. Add the lemon juice and mix well.

  3. Stir in the ice pieces.

  4. Pour in the gin, maraschino, and kirschwasser.

  5. Add a few drops of essence of lemon to flavor.

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

Lump sugar
Dissolves into the iced water to sweeten the punch and balance the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetness.
Gin
Provides the spirit base and main aroma of the punch.
Maraschino
Adds sweetness and a cherry-almond aroma to the spirit base.
Kirschwasser
Adds a dry, concentrated cherry aroma that deepens the flavor.

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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