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Drink

Victoria Punch

A chilled punch made with water, sugar, lemon and orange juice, angelica, cider, and gin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Victoria Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water and sugar for 15 minutes.

Flavour and freeze

  1. Add lemon juice, grated orange rind, and orange juice.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Partially freeze it.

Finish and refreeze

  1. Stir in angelica, cider, and gin.

  2. Freeze again.

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. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Orange + angelicatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Orange + cidertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together396 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point so the ice stays softer.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and liquid to the base.
Cider
Adds apple flavour and extra liquid to the punch.
Gin
Adds aroma and, as alcohol, keeps the frozen mixture from freezing rock hard.

The step that matters

Partially freeze before adding the alcohol. Freezing the base partway first builds a slushy texture. Gin and sugar both lower the freezing point, so the mixture sets slowly and needs the second freeze to firm up properly.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

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