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Drink

Cold Punch

A chilled beverage made with water, sugar, white wine, lemon syrup, ginger, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Combine 1 pint of cold water and 1 pound of white sugar in a saucepan and heat until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Add 3 bottles of white wine, lemon syrup to taste, and a little ginger. Heat until hot but do not boil.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in ½ bottle of fine rum.

Bottle

  1. As the punch begins to cool, bottle it and cork it well. It will keep for some time.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. White wine + rumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Ginger + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the wine and lemon syrup.
White wine
Forms the base liquid, providing most of the volume, body and acidity.
Fine rum
Adds strength and aroma, added off the heat so its aroma is preserved.
Lemon syrup
Adds bright citrus acidity and flavour.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma.

The step that matters

Heat until hot but do not boil. Boiling drives off alcohol and the delicate aromas of the wine and rum, leaving the punch flatter and less fragrant. Keeping it just hot preserves both.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, white wine, syrup, ginger, rum):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, syrup, ginger, 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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