Skip to main content
Drink

Old Colonial Punch

A chilled punch made with raisins, currants, ginger, citrus, and ginger ale.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Old Colonial Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Steep the raisins and currants in boiling water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain and let cool.

  3. Add almond extract, preserved ginger, fruit juices, sugar, coconut, and cinnamon to the cooled mixture. Mix well and chill.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, pour over iced ginger ale and serve 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Sultana raisins
Steeping in hot water softens them and releases sweetness and body into the punch.
Currants
Steeping in hot water softens them and adds fruity sweetness and depth of flavour.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the cooled liquid, adding sweetness that balances the citrus acidity.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that brightens the punch and offsets the sugar.
Oranges
Their juice adds sweetness, acidity and fresh citrus aroma.
Ginger ale
Adds carbonation and gingery flavour when poured over the chilled base.

The step that matters

Let the steeped fruit cool before adding the other ingredients. Adding the juices, almond extract and ginger to very hot liquid can dull their fresh aromas, and the mixture needs to be cold before it is chilled and served over ice.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, lemon, sugar, almond, coconut, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, sugar, almond, coconut, ginger, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Raisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesOrange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipes