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Imperial Punch

A tropical punch made with pineapple, orange, lemon, hock wine, arrack, vanilla, seltzer, and champagne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Imperial Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the pineapple, removing the eyes.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the grated orange rind, cinnamon stick, and boiling water. Cover and steep for 1 hour.

Combine and chill

  1. Add the sliced pineapple, sliced oranges, strained lemon juice, hock, and arrack to a large bowl.

  2. Strain the cinnamon water into the bowl and add the vanilla. Chill until cold.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the seltzer water and champagne.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Adds fruity sweetness and aroma to the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the fruit and wine.
Champagne
Adds sparkle and a light, dry effervescence.
Arrack
Contributes strong spirit flavour and body to the punch.
Hock wine
Provides the wine base and mild acidity of the punch.

The step that matters

Adding the seltzer and champagne just before serving. Carbonation escapes quickly from warm or stirred liquids, so adding the sparkling ingredients last keeps the punch lively and fizzy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, orange, cinnamon, wine, vanilla, champagne):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, cinnamon, wine, vanilla, 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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