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Tea Punch for Receptions, Teas, Etc

A chilled punch made with flavored ice cream, tea, egg whites, sugar syrup, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Tea Punch for Receptions, Teas, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water in a saucepan until thread stage.

Make the base

  1. Pour hot syrup over beaten egg whites and mix until cold and foamy.

  2. Gradually add chilled tea to the egg mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the mixture into the flavored ice cream.

  2. Turn the dasher a few times and serve half frozen in punch 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Tea + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together121 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Egg whites
Whipped with hot syrup to form a light, foamy structure that lightens the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and, boiled with water, forms the syrup that cooks the egg whites.
Strong tea infusion
Adds tea flavour and liquid to thin the mixture.
Flavored ice cream
Provides the main body, cream and sweetness, and chills the punch as it freezes.

The step that matters

Pour hot syrup over beaten egg whites and mix until cold and foamy. The syrup must be at thread stage and poured slowly while beating. Hot syrup partly cooks the egg white proteins, which stabilises the foam; if poured too fast or too cool, the whites stay loose and the foam collapses.

“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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