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Ginger Punch

A chilled ginger drink made with water, sugar, ginger, orange juice, lemon juice, and crushed ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Ginger Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ginger syrup

  1. Chop the ginger.

  2. In a pot, combine the chopped ginger, cold water, and sugar.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the orange juice and lemon juice.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Strain it.

  4. Serve over crushed ice.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Root ginger
Provides the main spicy, aromatic flavour that defines the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and body to the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes. Boiling extracts the ginger's pungent compounds into the water, so the flavour develops in the syrup. Adding the juices only after boiling keeps their fresh citrus flavour from being dulled by heat.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Peppermintfits less well
  4. Rosemaryfits less well

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