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Gin Punch

A chilled gin punch made with gin, lemon peel, lemon juice, sugar, Maraschino liqueur, water, and iced soda-water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Gin Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour the gin over the outer peel of the lemon.

  2. Add the lemon juice, sugar, and Maraschino liqueur.

  3. Stir in the water and mix well.

  4. Finally, add the iced soda-water and serve.

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

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

  2. Gin + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Gin + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together306 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Gin
Provides the main spirit base and the botanical aroma that defines the punch.
Lemon peel
Releases aromatic oils into the gin, adding bright citrus fragrance.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and brightens the overall flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the acidity and alcohol bite.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds sweetness and a subtle cherry-almond aroma to the punch.

The step that matters

Pour the gin over the lemon peel. Steeping the peel in the gin extracts its aromatic oils, so the spirit carries the lemon flavour through the whole punch. Letting it sit before adding the other ingredients gives the peel time to infuse.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against gin, sugar. 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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