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Drink

Currant Punch

A chilled beverage made with sugar, water, lemon and orange juice, currant jelly, Apollonaris water, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Currant Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes.

  2. Skim the mixture and add the lemon and orange juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and stir in the currant jelly.

  2. Set aside until very cold.

  3. When ready to serve, add chipped ice and the Apollonaris water.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 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
Provides sweetness and body to balance the tart citrus and currant flavors.
Tart currant jelly
Adds tart fruit flavor, color, and a little pectin body to the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetness.
Apollonaris water
Adds carbonation, giving the punch a lively, sparkling texture.

The step that matters

Set aside until very cold. The base must be fully chilled before the carbonated water and ice go in. Adding sparkling water to a warm syrup loses fizz quickly and dilutes the punch.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, orange):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange. 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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