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Tea-punch

A punch made with lemons, green tea, sugar, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Green tea and rum work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 60 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Tea-punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Peel the yellow rind from the lemons and squeeze the juice.

Make the punch base

  1. Add the lemon juice and rind to the sugar.

  2. Pour the boiling tea over the sugar mixture.

  3. Stir in the rum.

Bottle and serve

  1. Bottle the mixture and let it stand for use.

  2. Dilute with ice before serving.

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. Green tea + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + green teatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and body, and balances the tartness and the tea's bitterness.
Lemons
Supply acidity and fragrant oils from the rind that brighten the punch.
Green tea
Adds tannins that give dryness and a subtle bitterness to offset the sugar.
Jamaica rum
Adds alcohol, warmth and a deep aroma that carries through the punch.

The step that matters

Dilute with ice before serving. The punch is concentrated, so melting ice adds water that lowers its strength and sweetness and chills it. Too little ice leaves it harsh and too strong, while too much makes it thin.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (green tea, sugar, rum):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against green tea, sugar, rum. 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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