Name: Best Tea Punch
Ingredients: 2 pints strong green tea, freshly made; 1 quart champagne; ½ pint curaçao; ½ pint brandy; Grated rind of 2 lemons; Juice of 3 lemons; 1 large orange, sliced and seeds removed; Sugar, to taste; Crushed ice

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Best Tea Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Brew 2 pints of strong green tea and let it cool.

Mix and serve

In a large bowl, combine the tea, champagne, curaçao, brandy, lemon rind, lemon juice, and sliced orange.
Sweeten the mixture to taste.
Serve chilled, either frozen or with crushed ice.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Champagne + brandytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together169 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Champagne + orangetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together260 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Champagne + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Green tea + orangetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together46 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green tea: Provides the base liquid and a light tannin bitterness that balances the sweetness.
Champagne: Adds sparkle and a dry, acidic lift to the punch.
Curaçao: Contributes orange-flavoured sweetness and aroma.
Brandy: Adds alcoholic strength and warm, aromatic depth.
Lemon juice: Brings acidity that brightens the flavour and offsets sugar.
Sugar: Sweetens the punch to taste, softening the acidity and tannins.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (green tea, champagne, brandy, orange, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Pineapplefits better
Lemonthe original
Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against green tea, champagne, brandy, orange, 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.