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Lemon Punch

A chilled lemon and Champagne punch made with lemon pulp, rind, green tea, sugar, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and champagne work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Lemon Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Roll the lemons under your hand until soft.

  2. Cut them into thin slices and remove the pulp and seeds.

Make the punch

  1. In a clean porcelain-lined stewpan, combine the pulp, yellow rind, green tea, and loaf sugar.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and stir well.

  3. Add the Champagne wine and heat until hot.

  4. Serve immediately, preferably in bed.

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 + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

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

  2. Green tea + champagnetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Lemon + green teatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the acidity and fragrant oils that give the punch its bright flavour.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Champagne wine
Adds acidity and a light, sparkling character to the punch.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against green tea, sugar, 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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