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Confederate Punch

A sweet punch made with sugar, water, sherry, brandy, rum, lemon juice, lemon rinds, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and rum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Confederate Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water.

  2. Add the sherry wine, brandy, rum, and lemon juice.

  3. Rub the rinds of the lemons on sugar to extract the yellow part, then mix it into the punch.

  4. Fill a pitcher with packed cracked ice before pouring in the punch.

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. Sherry + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  3. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

  5. Wine + rumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Dissolves into the water to sweeten the punch and balance the alcohol and acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and offsets the sweetness.
Lemon rinds
Lend aromatic oils from the peel, adding fragrance and a light bitterness.
Sherry wine
Adds body and nutty, oxidized flavour that deepens the punch.
Brandy
Provides the main spirit backbone and warming aroma.

The step that matters

Rubbing the lemon rinds on sugar. Rubbing the peel into sugar draws the fragrant oils out of the rind so they dissolve into the punch. Mixing the rinds in without this step gives a weaker lemon aroma.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sherry, wine, brandy, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, wine, brandy, 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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