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Drink

Vatican Punch

A chilled punch made with pineapple, lemon, sugar, champagne, rum, egg whites, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and rum work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 451 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Vatican Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Grate the pineapples.

  2. Strain the pineapple juice.

  3. Pare the lemons, removing all pith.

  4. Wash the lemons.

  5. Crush the lemons.

  6. Strain the lemon juice.

Make the punch base

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water to make a syrup.

  2. Add the pineapple juice to the syrup and freeze.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Add 2 teaspoons of sugar for each egg to the egg whites.

  5. Add the lemon juice to the egg whites.

  6. Pour the egg mixture into the freezer with the pineapple mixture. Mix thoroughly.

Finish and serve

  1. Add ½ cup of rum for each quart of the mixture before serving.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of champagne for every 2 quarts before serving.

  3. Return to the freezer. Chill 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. Pineapple + rumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Champagne + rumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + champagnetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they add a light, airy foam that gives the punch a frothy texture.
Lemons
Their juice supplies the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and syrup.
Sugar
Dissolved into syrup and sweetened into the egg whites, it provides sweetness and helps stabilize the foam.
Pineapples
Their juice adds fruity flavour and body to the punch base.
Champagne
Added near serving, it adds sparkle and a light, dry effervescence.
Jamaica rum
Added near serving, it adds a strong, aromatic spirit flavour.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks so they trap air and hold a foam. If they are under-whipped or greasy with fat, the foam collapses and the punch loses its light texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, champagne, rum, egg. 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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