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Drink

French Punch

A chilled wine punch made with claret, sugar, cinnamon, citrus juices, fruit slices, mint, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

French Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch base

  1. In a large pot, combine the claret, sugar, cinnamon sticks, lemon juice, and orange juice.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Once boiled, pour it into a container and let it cool.

Add fruit and chill

  1. When cool, add thin slices of lemons and oranges, along with several sprigs of mint.

  2. Pack the container in ice to chill.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Claret
Forms the wine base that gives the punch its body and main flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the wine and sugar.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity, rounding out the citrus flavour.
Cinnamon sticks
Infuse warm spice aroma into the hot liquid as it heats and cools.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the fruit. Adding sliced fruit and mint to hot liquid can soften the fruit and draw out bitter, cooked flavours from the mint. Cooling first keeps the garnish fresh and bright.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, lemon, orange. 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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