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Drink

Lemon Punch

A chilled drink made with lemon syrup, sherry wine, and ice water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Lemon Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the lemon syrup and sherry wine in a large pitcher.

  2. Add the ice water and stir well.

  3. Serve chilled for a refreshing summer drink.

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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Syrup + sherrytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Syrup + winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together381 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

Lemon syrup
Provides the main sweetness and lemon flavor of the punch.
Sherry wine
Adds body and a dry, fortified wine character to the drink.
Ice water
Dilutes the mixture and chills it to serving temperature.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, sherry, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, sherry, 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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