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Bordeaux Punch

A hot punch made with claret, sugar, cinnamon, orange and lemon juices, garnished with mint and sifted sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Bordeaux Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. In a saucepan, combine the claret, sugar, cinnamon stick, orange juice, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the mixture until it reaches boiling point, then pour the hot mixture into a bowl.

  3. Add 2 ounces of orange juice and 2 ounces of lemon juice.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with a bunch of mint and sprinkle with sifted sugar.

  2. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Claret
Forms the wine base that carries the other flavours.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Orange juice
Adds fruity acidity and sweetness to the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the wine and balances sweetness.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, 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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