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Cider Punch

A chilled beverage made with sugar, water, sherry wine, lemons, and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and cider work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

Cider Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the sugar and water in a bowl until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Slice the lemons and add them to the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the sherry wine, and then add the cider.

  2. Serve chilled.

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. Sherry + cidertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  2. Wine + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  5. 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

Sugar
Dissolved in the water to add sweetness that balances the tart lemon and wine.
Lemons
Add acidity and fresh citrus aroma that brighten the punch.
Sherry wine
Adds depth, dryness and aromatic complexity to the punch.
Cider
Forms the main liquid and carries most of the punch's apple flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully before adding the fruit and liquids. Sugar dissolves much more easily in warm or well-stirred water than when left as crystals. Undissolved grains can settle to the bottom, leaving the punch unevenly sweet.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, wine, cider. 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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