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Claret Cup for a Party

A chilled punch made with claret, champagne, fruit, sugar, and Apollinaris.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Claret Cup for a Party

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, Apollinaris, sliced lemons, oranges, pineapple, and maraschino.

  2. Place the mixture in a vessel or tin dish filled with ice.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, add the claret and champagne.

  2. Stir thoroughly and garnish with berries.

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. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + champagnetop 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. Orange + champagnetop 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

Lump sugar
Sweetens the punch and dissolves into the fruit and mixer base.
Claret
Forms the wine base that gives the punch its body and dark color.
Champagne or sparkling wine
Adds effervescence and lightness when added just before serving.
Maraschino
Contributes a sweet, almond-like aroma and flavor to the fruit mixture.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and wine.

The step that matters

Adding the claret and champagne. Sparkling wine loses its carbonation when stirred vigorously or left warm, so it should be added just before serving and stirred gently and briefly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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