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Drink

Cold Punch

A chilled punch made with rum, curaçao, champagne, lemon, powdered sugar, water, and ice.

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 ↓

Cold Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine powdered sugar and lemon rind with water until dissolved.

  2. Add rum, curaçao, champagne, and lemon juice.

  3. Break ice into the bowl before serving.

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. Champagne + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Rum + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Rum
Adds the spirit base and strong aroma to the punch.
Curaçao
Adds orange aroma and a touch of sweetness.
Champagne
Adds sparkle and a light, dry lift to the punch.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the water to sweeten the punch evenly.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrance from the rind and juice.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, champagne, 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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