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May Wine Punch

A punch made with white wine, red wine, champagne, woodruff, strawberries, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and red wine share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

May Wine Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine the cleaned woodruff with 1 quart of white wine and let it steep for 30 to 40 minutes.

  2. Strain the wine to remove the woodruff.

  3. Dissolve the sugar in the water and add it to the strained wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Add another quart of white wine, the red wine, and the champagne.

  2. About 30 minutes before serving, add the ripe strawberries to the punch.

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. White wine + red winetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

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

  2. White wine + champagnetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Red wine + champagnetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + champagnetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 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

Fresh woodruff
Infuses the wine with its distinctive herbal, vanilla-like aroma as it steeps.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the wines.
Champagne
Adds carbonation and lightness to the finished punch.
Ripe strawberries
Contribute fruit flavor and aroma to the punch.

The step that matters

Steeping the woodruff. Steeping too long can make woodruff taste bitter and overpowering, while too short a steep yields little aroma. Timing the steep within the stated window balances fragrance against bitterness in the wine.

“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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