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Drink

Tea Punch

A punch made with Jamaica rum, sugar, lemon, green tea, and crushed ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and green tea work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 60 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Tea Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the lemons, slicing the rind into very thin strips.

  2. Pour boiling hot tea over the lemon peel.

  3. Mix the lemon juice and sugar together.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine all ingredients, adding the rum last.

  2. Serve in a pitcher filled with crushed 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. Rum + green teatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + green teatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rum + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

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

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

Jamaica rum
Adds alcohol and a rich, aromatic depth that carries the punch's flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the sourness of the lemon juice.
Lemons
Provide acidity from the juice and aromatic oils from the peel.
Green tea
Adds mild bitterness and tannin, giving the punch body and a dry finish.

The step that matters

Pouring boiling hot tea over the lemon peel. Hot liquid draws aromatic oils out of the peel quickly, but it also extracts bitter tannins from the tea and pith. Pouring it over the peel and then mixing promptly keeps the punch fragrant rather than harsh.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, sugar, green tea. 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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