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Elderberry Punch

A chilled punch made with elderberry wine, icing sugar, boiling water, lemon slices, and grated nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Elderberry Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine 2 bottles of elderberry wine, ¼ pound of icing sugar, and 3 pints of boiling water, then mix well.

  2. Add the sliced lemon and grate nutmeg on top before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Elderberry + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Elderberry + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Elderberry wine
Provides the main body, fruity flavour and colour of the punch.
Icing sugar
Dissolves easily into the liquid, adding sweetness to balance the wine's acidity.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that lift the sweetness of the punch.

Swap the elderberry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Elderberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, lemon, nutmeg. 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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