Name: Champagne Punch
Ingredients: one bottle champagne; one half tumblerful of sugar; one wine-glassful of rum; one half dozen lemons

Why it works: Champagne and rum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 136 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

one bottle champagne
one half tumblerful of sugar
one wine-glassful of rum
one half dozen lemons

Directions

One bottle champagne, one half tumblerful of sugar, one wine-glassful of rum, and one half dozen lemons. — Col. W. E. Simma.

By Vehling, Joseph Dommers, 1879-1950. fmo. 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. See the original page.

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Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Champagne + rumtop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together136 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Champagne + winetop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together153 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Wine + rumtop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together225 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).
Champagne + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together358 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Wine + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,993 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

Pineapplebetter flavor fit
Strawberrybetter flavor fit
Vanillabetter flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against champagne, sugar, wine, rum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).