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Drink

Baltimore Punch

A mixed alcoholic punch made with rum, brandy, port, Curacao, sugar, lemon, black tea, soda, and optional champagne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and champagne match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 137 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Baltimore Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch base

  1. Heat the black tea in a pot.

  2. Add sugar and lemon juice to the tea and mix thoroughly.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cotton cloth.

  4. Add the brandy, rum, and Curacao to the tea mixture.

  5. Bottle and seal the punch if storing.

Serve

  1. Place a clean cake of ice in a punch bowl.

  2. Pour the punch mixture over the ice.

  3. Add 3 pints of soda for each quart of punch.

  4. Stir gently.

  5. Serve immediately.

  6. Add a bottle of champagne for every three bottles of soda to increase fizz.

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. Rum + champagnetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Rum + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + champagnetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Rum + black teatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemons
Supply acidity that brightens the punch and offsets the sugar and spirits.
Black tea
Its tannins add dryness and body to the punch.
Brandy
Forms the spirit base and adds warmth and fruity aroma.
Jamaica rum
Adds depth and a rich, aromatic spirit character to the punch.
Soda
Dilutes the punch and adds carbonation for lift and fizz.

The step that matters

Add the soda just before serving. Carbonation escapes quickly from soda water. Adding it too early lets the punch go flat, so it should go in just before the punch is poured and served.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, brandy, sugar, black tea, 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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