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Punch, English

A lemon and sugar punch with rum, brandy, boiling water, and optional Madeira or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Punch, English

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the yellow rind from the lemon.

  2. Combine the rind with the lump sugar in a punch bowl.

  3. Squeeze the lemon juice into the bowl with the sugar.

Make the punch

  1. Add the rum and brandy in your preferred proportions.

  2. Mix the spirits thoroughly with the sugar and lemon juice. Stir the mixture.

  3. Gradually pour in the boiling water.

  4. Optionally, add Madeira or sherry to taste.

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. Rum + sherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Rum + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws oils from the lemon rind when it is rubbed in.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma, with the rind supplying fragrant oils and the juice supplying sourness.
Rum
Adds spirit strength and a rich, warming flavour to the punch.
Brandy
Adds spirit strength and fruity depth alongside the rum.
Boiling water
Dilutes the punch and dissolves the sugar, mellowing the strong spirits.

The step that matters

Mix the spirits thoroughly with the sugar and lemon juice. Sugar dissolves much more readily when it is first worked with the lemon juice and rind oils. If the spirits are added before the sugar has dissolved, the sugar can settle at the bottom, leaving the punch unevenly sweetened.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rum, brandy, sherry. 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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