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Drink

Ladies' Punch

A punch made with claret, orange, tea, citrus juices, sugar, and sparkling water, served over ice.

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

Ladies' Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Combine the claret, sliced orange, strong tea, orange juice, lemon juice, and sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Stir well until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Add the sparkling water and mix gently.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses over a large lump of ice.

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. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

  3. Orange + teatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Claret
Provides the wine base and main body of the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity to the punch.
Strong english breakfast tea
Adds tannin, giving the punch a dry, astringent structure.
Highly charged water
Adds carbonation, giving the punch lightness and fizz.

The step that matters

Add the sparkling water and mix gently. Carbonation escapes quickly when stirred vigorously, so gentle mixing keeps the punch fizzy.

“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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