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Drink

Club Punch

A punch made with Burgundy wine, rum, brandy, Benedictine, Vichy water, citrus, pineapple, tea, and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Club Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling water and sugar for 10 minutes.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix the remaining ingredients, except ice, and sweeten to taste with the syrup.

  2. Pour into a punch bowl over a large piece of 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. Rum + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness, which is balanced by the acidity of the lemon juice and fruit.
Burgundy wine
Adds body, colour and fruity, tannic flavour to the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and offsets the sweetness.
Rum
Adds alcohol, warmth and aromatic depth to the punch.
Vichy water
Adds carbonation and lightness, making the punch more refreshing.
Pineapple
Adds fruit flavour and sweetness along with the syrup from the can.

The step that matters

Sweeten to taste after mixing. Cold temperature and dilution from the ice and carbonated water make sweetness taste weaker than it will once served. Add the syrup gradually, tasting as you go, so the punch is not overly sweet.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, rum, brandy, orange, pineapple, syrup. 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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