Skip to main content
Drink

Punch

A chilled fruit punch made with water, spirits or wine, fruit juice, sugar, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine 1 quart of hot water with your choice of spirituous liquors or wine.

  2. Add the juice of fruits and sugar to taste.

  3. If fresh lemons are not available, substitute with crystallized citric acid and a few drops of essence of lemon.

  4. Stir well to mix all ingredients thoroughly.

  5. Serve chilled or over ice for a refreshing summer drink.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

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

Spirituous liquors or wine
Provides the alcoholic base and much of the drink's aroma and body.
Juice of fruits
Adds acidity and fruity flavor that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and offsets the sharpness of the fruit juice.
Crystallized citric acid
Supplies sourness in place of fresh lemon juice when lemons are unavailable.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, 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.

More punch recipes

Milk 169Fruit 129Roman 90Tea 41Claret 33Oxford 33 See all 12 →

You might also like

Lemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesWine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipes