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Drink

Frozen Punch

A chilled beverage made from pineapple, lemon juice, egg whites, wine, brandy, and a syrup of water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Frozen Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 quart of water with 1 quart of sugar until it forms a thick syrup.

  2. Pour the syrup over 1 quart of chopped pineapple while boiling.

  3. Let this mixture stand overnight.

Finish and freeze

  1. Add the juice of 4 lemons and the frothed whites of 4 eggs.

  2. Stir in 1 large cup of wine and 1 tablespoon of brandy.

  3. Freeze the mixture.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Pineapple + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  4. Pineapple + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the boiled water to form a thick syrup that sweetens the punch and keeps it from freezing rock-hard.
Chopped pineapple
Contributes fruit flavor and juice, and steeping in the hot syrup draws out its flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the flavor.
Egg whites
Frothed whites add lightness and a smooth, airy texture to the frozen mixture.
Wine
Adds flavor and acidity, and alcohol that keeps the frozen texture softer.
Brandy
Adds aromatic depth and further alcohol that softens the frozen texture.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture. Alcohol and sugar lower the freezing point, so the punch stays slushy rather than solid. Too little sugar or alcohol can freeze it into a hard block.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pineapple, egg, wine, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple, egg, wine, brandy. 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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