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Drink

Orange Punch

A sweet sherry orange punch served with fruit pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sherry work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 823 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Orange Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Mix the orange juice, sugar, and sherry in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture to boiling point.

  3. Add the well-beaten egg white and mix thoroughly.

  4. Let it simmer for five minutes.

  5. Strain through muslin and cool completely.

Serve

  1. Pour the syrup over small pieces of oranges, bananas, and candied cherries in frappe glasses.

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. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sherry + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Orange juice
Supplies the main citrus flavour and tartness that balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a warm, wine-based depth of flavour.
Egg white
Helps clarify the syrup by collecting fine particles that strain out.

The step that matters

Simmering and straining the egg white mixture. Heat cooks the beaten egg white so it sets and traps cloudy particles. If the mixture is not brought to a simmer, or is strained before the egg white has set, the fine solids pass through the muslin and the syrup stays cloudy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, 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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