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Hollandaise Punch

A chilled pineapple punch with brandy, gin, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 298 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hollandaise Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine water, sugar, and a little grated lemon rind in a pot.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat.

Make the punch

  1. Add lemon juice and pineapple.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Freeze the mixture partially.

  5. Stir in brandy and gin.

  6. Continue freezing until set.

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 + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

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

Sugar
Sweetens the punch and, with water, dissolves into a syrup that gives body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth, and its alcohol keeps the frozen punch softer.
Gin
Adds aromatic depth and alcohol, which lowers the freezing point and keeps the texture scoopable.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture partially. Alcohol and sugar lower the freezing point, so the mixture freezes slowly and unevenly. Stopping at partial freeze and then stirring in the spirits before finishing the freeze helps keep the texture smooth rather than icy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pineapple, brandy, gin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple, brandy, gin. 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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