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Champagne Punch with Fruit

A chilled punch made with champagne, fruit, sugar, curaçao, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Champagne Punch with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix all ingredients except champagne in a punch bowl.

  2. Add a large square piece of ice.

  3. Pour the champagne over the mixture.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Champagne + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  5. Champagne + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Champagne
Provides the sparkling carbonation and the main wine flavour of the punch.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the citrus and wine.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus aroma that lift the punch.
Oranges
Add sweetness, citrus aroma and juice to the punch.
Pineapple
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity along with aroma.
Curaçao
Adds orange aroma and sweetness that complement the fruit.

The step that matters

Pour the champagne over the mixture. Champagne loses its carbonation quickly when agitated or warmed, so it should be added last and gently poured over the chilled base to keep the punch sparkling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against champagne, pineapple, sugar, orange. 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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