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Punch a LA Romaine — Roman Punch Ice

A chilled punch made with lemon ice, rum, brandy, champagne, Maraschino, egg whites, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and champagne match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 137 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Punch a LA Romaine — Roman Punch Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ice

  1. Make a quart of lemon ice.

  2. Flavor the lemon ice with rum, brandy, champagne, and Maraschino.

Make the meringue

  1. When frozen, whip the egg whites to a strong froth.

  2. Boil the sugar until it reaches the ball stage, then rub it against the sides of the pot to grain it.

  3. When the sugar turns white, quickly mix it with the whipped egg whites.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir the mixture lightly into the lemon ice.

  2. Once cold, mix well and serve in glasses.

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. Rum + champagnetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Rum + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Brandy + champagnetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Lemon + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon ice
Provides the cold, frozen base and the bright citrus flavor of the punch.
Egg whites
Whipped into a froth, they add lightness and an airy, foamy texture to the punch.
Sugar
Boiled and grained, it adds sweetness and helps form the crystalline texture folded into the punch.
Rum
Adds spirited depth and aroma to the lemon ice.
Brandy
Adds warmth and aromatic depth to the lemon ice.

The step that matters

Stirring the sugar and whipped whites into the lemon ice. The mixture must be folded in lightly while the ice is still frozen and the froth is intact. Stirring too hard deflates the whipped egg whites and melts the ice, leaving a thin, watery punch instead of a light, airy one.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rum, brandy, champagne, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, brandy, champagne, egg, 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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