Name: Punch Extract
Ingredients: 2 pounds cut loaf sugar; 2 cups water; juice of 4 lemons; 1 bottle arrack; boiling water

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Punch Extract

Ingredients

Directions

Make the extract

Boil the sugar with water until clear.
Add the lemon juice and let it cool.
Mix in the arrack.

Serve

To serve, combine 1 part punch extract with 2 parts boiling water.

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.

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

Cut loaf sugar: Dissolves into the water to give the extract its sweetness and body.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.
Arrack: Provides the spirit base and its distinctive aroma and strength.

“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.