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Oriental Punch

A tea-based punch with lemon, ginger, mint, and ginger ale, served over ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oriental Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar, water, cinnamon, and preserved ginger together for five minutes.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Add the lemon juice.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Mix in the green coloring and peppermint oil.

  6. Let it stand for one hour in a covered dish.

Serve

  1. Pour over a large cake of ice in a punch bowl.

  2. Garnish with mint leaves.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + pepperminttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Peppermint + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the punch, balancing the acidity of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that cuts through the sweetness.
Tea
Provides the base liquid and a tannic, slightly bitter backbone for the punch.
Preserved ginger
Contributes spicy aroma and warmth that is infused into the syrup.
Cinnamon
Infuses warm, aromatic spice into the boiled syrup.

The step that matters

Let it stand for one hour in a covered dish. Flavors from the cinnamon, ginger, and mint steep gradually into the liquid, and covering keeps aromatics from escaping and the surface from picking up odors. Rushing this step leaves the punch flat and under-flavored.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, cinnamon, sugar, mint, peppermint, ginger, tea):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, cinnamon, sugar, mint, peppermint, ginger, tea. 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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