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Punch a LA Russe

A chilled punch made with water, black tea, port wine, brandy, sugar, lemon slices, and caramel coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and brandy work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 127 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Punch a LA Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the water and steep the black tea for 5 minutes.

  2. Slice the lemons thinly and place them in a bowl.

  3. Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water to make a syrup.

  4. Pour the syrup over the lemon slices and let it cool.

Make the punch

  1. Once cool, add the steeped tea, port wine, and brandy to the mixture.

  2. Strain the punch into a freezer container.

  3. Chill the lemon slices on ice.

  4. Add the chilled lemon slices to the punch before serving.

  5. Add enough caramel coloring to achieve a ginger ale color.

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. Port wine + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Black tea + brandytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Black tea + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the hot water to form a syrup that sweetens the punch and balances the acidity.
Black tea
Adds tannins for a subtle bitter-astringent backbone that gives the punch body.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aromatic citrus oils that brighten the sweetness.
Port wine
Adds fortified wine body, fruity sweetness and depth of flavour.
Brandy
Adds alcoholic warmth and aromatic depth to the punch.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against black tea, port wine, brandy, sugar. 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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