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Baltimore Tea Punch

A citrusy punch made with lemon juice, tea, sugar, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tea and black tea share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 26 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Baltimore Tea Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Put the lemon skins in a pitcher.

  2. Pour 1 quart of boiling tea over the lemon skins and let it stand for 10 minutes.

  3. Add 1½ lbs of sugar and 1 quart of old Jamaica rum.

  4. Strain the mixture and bottle it, corking tightly.

Store and serve

  1. Store in a cool place; it will keep for 6 months.

  2. Serve in a bowl with crushed 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. Tea + black teatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Lemon + teatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

  3. Black tea + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

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

  4. Tea + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Provides the acidity that balances the sugar and rum.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, offsetting the sharpness of the lemon.
Old jamaica rum
Supplies the spirit base and deep aroma of the punch.
Black and green tea
Adds tannin for dryness and astringency that gives the punch structure.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, black tea, sugar, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, black tea, sugar, rum. 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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