Skip to main content
Drink

Currant Punch

A chilled beverage made with currant jelly, water, sugar, lemon juice, and shaved ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Currant Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Beat the currant jelly until frothy.

  2. Slowly add the boiling water, sugar, and lemon juice.

  3. Stir in the cold water.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add shaved ice.

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

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

  2. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

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

Currant jelly
Provides the main fruit flavour and colour, and its sweetness and tartness shape the punch.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon juice and currant tartness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and cuts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the shaved ice just before serving. Ice melts and dilutes the punch, so adding it early makes the drink watery and weakens its flavour. Holding it until serving keeps the balance intended.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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 WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesBlack Currant CordialBlack Currant Cordial11 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipes