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Claret Punch

A chilled claret-based punch with lemon, orange, cucumber, tea, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Claret Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a large pitcher, combine the juice of 3 lemons, sugar, and cold black tea.

  2. Add the sliced orange, sliced lemon, and cucumber rind.

  3. Let the mixture sit for 30 minutes before serving.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the cucumber rind.

  2. Stir in the claret and Apollinaris water or champagne.

  3. Serve over 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Coffee + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  4. Orange + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and the wine's tannins.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the acidity of the lemon and wine.
Black tea
Adds mild tannin and a light bitter edge to the punch.
Claret
Forms the main body and wine flavour of the punch.
Orange and lemon slices
Release citrus oils and flavour into the mixture as it sits.

The step that matters

Let the mixture sit for 30 minutes before serving. Steeping the citrus slices and cucumber rind in the sugared tea draws out their aromatic oils and flavour. Removing the cucumber rind afterward prevents it from becoming bitter over time.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, coffee, black tea, orange, champagne):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Cucumberthe original
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, coffee, black tea, orange, champagne. 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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