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Drink

Charley's Punch

A citrusy rum punch made with Santa Cruz rum, New Bedford rum, lemon juice, carbonated water, optional maraschino, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Charley's Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Juice the lemons and combine the juice with the Santa Cruz rum and New Bedford rum in a punch bowl.

  2. Add the carbonated water and maraschino if using. Sweeten to taste.

  3. Add a large lump of ice to the punch bowl and serve.

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. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Rum + lemontop 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

Santa cruz rum
Provides the main spirit base and much of the punch's aroma and flavor.
New bedford rum
Adds additional rum body and depth to the punch's base spirit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and the strength of the rum.
Carbonated water
Adds lightness and fizz, diluting the punch while keeping it refreshing.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, sugar. 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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