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Claret Punch

A chilled punch made with claret wine, citrus juices, raisins, sugar, cinnamon, and ice water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Claret Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Put raisins in cold water and bring slowly to a boil.

  2. Boil for twenty minutes, then strain.

  3. Add sugar, cinnamon, and lemon rind, and boil for five minutes.

Finish the punch

  1. Stir in orange juice and lemon juice, then cool and strain.

  2. Pour in claret and dilute with ice water.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Raisins
Give body and a mild sweetness to the raisin-infused base.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity, rounding out the flavour of the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sugar.
Claret wine
Provides the main wine flavour, body and tannin structure of the punch.

The step that matters

Cool before adding the juices and claret. Boiling citrus juice and wine can dull their fresh aromas and flavours, so the syrup should be cooled and strained first. Adding the wine and ice water last keeps the punch lively and at a drinkable temperature.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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