Skip to main content
Drink

Roman Punch

A chilled lemon rum punch with whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Roman Punch

Why it works: Sugar and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Roman Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Juice the lemons.

  2. Mix the lemon juice with 1 quart of water and sugar to taste.

  3. Freeze the mixture.

Add the meringue and rum

  1. Whip the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. Mix the whipped egg white with sugar.

  3. Combine the whipped egg white with the frozen lemon mixture and add ½ pint of Jamaica rum.

  4. Freeze again before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it adds a light, airy foam that softens the icy texture.
Jamaica rum
Adds aroma and flavour, and alcohol keeps the frozen mixture from freezing rock-hard.
Lemons
Provide the juice that gives the punch its sharp acidity and bright flavour.

The step that matters

Freeze again before serving. Freezing the whipped egg white into the mixture can cause it to deflate or separate if handled poorly. Refreezing it gently after the rum is added helps the mixture firm up into a smooth, scoopable texture, since alcohol slows freezing.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, rum):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes