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Tea Punch

A chilled tea punch made with green tea, lemon rind, sugar, lemon juice, rum or sherry, served over crushed ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Green tea and rum work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 60 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Tea Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch base

  1. Combine the strong green tea, lemon rind, sugar, and lemon juice in a large bowl.

  2. Stir the mixture for a few moments.

  3. Let the lemon rind steep in the mixture for several hours to enhance the flavor.

  4. Strain the mixture to remove the lemon rind.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the rum or sherry to the strained mixture.

  2. Serve in glasses filled 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. Green tea + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Green tea + lemontop 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. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

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

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

Lemon rind
Releases aromatic oils into the liquid, adding fragrance and a bright, slightly bitter edge.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon juice and tea.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetness.
Green tea
Adds tannins and a subtle astringent, herbal background to the punch.
Rum or sherry
Adds alcohol, body, and warming flavor that carries the punch's aroma.

The step that matters

Steeping the lemon rind. Steeping for several hours draws aromatic oils from the rind into the liquid. Rind pared too thick adds bitter pith, and steeping too long can make the punch harsh, so the rind should be removed once flavor is extracted.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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