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Drink

Punch in Haste

A citrusy punch made with lemon, sugar, citric acid, clarified syrup, water, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Punch in Haste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavoured syrup

  1. Remove the yellow rind from the lemon using the sugar until the yellow part is gone.

  2. Crush the rind to a powder with the citric acid.

  3. Pour the powdered mixture over the clarified syrup.

Make and serve the punch

  1. Mix 1 tablespoon of the flavored syrup with 1 pint of water.

  2. Add 1 glass of rum or brandy, or a mixture of both, and serve.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Syrup + rumtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Rum or brandy
Provides the spirit and aroma that define the punch.
Citric acid
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Clarified syrup
Supplies sweetness and body to the punch.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, rum. 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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