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Drink

Glasgow Punch

A citrus punch made with lemon rind, sugar, sliced lemons, Seville orange, boiling water, rum, Cognac, and optional pineapple rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Glasgow Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons and place it in a bowl with lumps of sugar until saturated.

  2. Thinly slice the remaining lemons and the Seville orange, adding the rinds to the bowl.

  3. Pour in a small amount of boiling water and press the juice from most of the fruit into the bowl.

Add the spirits and serve

  1. Add more hot water and mix thoroughly with a punch ladle.

  2. To make it a genuine British punch, add 1 bottle of rum for every pint of Cognac.

  3. Adjust the strength to suit your guests' preferences.

  4. For garnish, cut limes and run each section around the rim of the bowl, squeezing in juice to flavor.

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 + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Rum + cognac brandytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Rum + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Orange + limetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide acidity and aromatic oils from the rind and juice that balance the sugar.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws oils from the lemon rind as it dissolves.
Jamaican rum
Adds strength and a rich, funky aroma that carries the citrus.
Cognac brandy
Adds strength and fruity, floral depth to the punch.

The step that matters

Saturating the rind with sugar. Rubbing or soaking citrus rind in sugar pulls its aromatic oils into the sugar, which then dissolves into the punch. If the sugar is not given time to saturate, the punch tastes thin and lacks citrus aroma.

Swap the pineapple

The recipe marks pineapple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, orange, rum, cognac brandy, syrup, lime):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Pineapplethe original
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, orange, rum, cognac brandy, syrup, lime. 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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