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Gin Punch

A chilled gin punch with lemon, sugar, Maraschino liqueur, water, and 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 and sugar, and stir until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Mix in the Maraschino liqueur and water.

  4. Finally, add the iced soda-water and stir gently.

  5. Serve chilled.

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 flavour and alcoholic base of the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the drink and balances the sweetness.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds sweetness and a distinct cherry-almond aroma to the punch.
Soda-water
Adds carbonation, giving the punch lightness and fizz.

The step that matters

Stir the sugar until it dissolves. Sugar dissolves much more readily in liquid that is already mixed with acid and alcohol when stirred, so stirring until clear avoids grainy sweetness. Adding the fizzy soda-water too early or stirring it hard would lose carbonation.

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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