Skip to main content
Drink

Pony Punch

A punch made with gunpowder tea, lemon, sugar, spices, and a blend of wine, brandy, rum, and whiskey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pony Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the gunpowder tea, lemon zest rubbed on sugar, powdered cinnamon, lemon juice, nutmeg, and sugar syrup.

  2. Add water, white wine, brandy, rum, and whiskey. Mix well.

  3. Boil the mixture.

  4. Strain and serve very hot.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Tea + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Gunpowder tea
Provides the main tannic, bitter backbone that balances the sugar and citrus.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and cuts through the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.
White wine
Adds moisture and a light fruity acidity to the spirit blend.
Brandy
Contributes fruity, aromatic spirit notes and body to the punch.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture. Boiling drives off some alcohol and can make the punch taste harsh or flat if overdone. Heating also dissolves the sugar fully and blends the flavours, so watch the time and temperature closely.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, syrup, white wine, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, syrup, white wine, brandy. 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 WineLemon Wine31 recipesWine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipes