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Drink

Regent's Punch

A citrus and spice infused rum punch served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Regent's Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon and orange.

  2. Add vanilla, cloves, and cinnamon stick.

  3. Cover with a hot syrup made from sugar and water.

  4. Infuse in a warm place for several hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the juice of 12 lemons and rum.

  2. Strain and serve very cold.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

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

  4. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vanilla + rumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together728 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the punch and, dissolved into hot syrup, helps carry the flavours of the rind and spices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the whole punch.
Rum
Adds body and alcohol, carrying the aroma of the spices and citrus.
Lemon rind
Supplies aromatic oils from the peel that flavour the infusion.
Orange rind
Adds fragrant citrus oils and a softer sweet-citrus note to the infusion.
Cinnamon stick
Contributes warm aromatic flavour as it infuses into the punch.

The step that matters

Infuse in a warm place for several hours. Flavour from the rind, spices and vanilla moves into the liquid slowly, and warmth speeds extraction. Too short a time leaves the punch weak and unevenly flavoured.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, vanilla, clove, cinnamon, sugar, rum):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, vanilla, clove, cinnamon, 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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