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Drink

Tea Punch

A chilled beverage made with strong tea, citrus juice, sugar, egg white, and optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Tea Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make 1 quart of strong tea using Ceylon or Oolong.

  2. Add the juice of 1 orange, ½ lemon, and 1 cup of sugar.

Freeze and serve

  1. Before the mixture is completely frozen, stir in the beaten egg white.

  2. After freezing, stir in 1 cup of whipped cream, or serve with a spoonful of whipped cream on top of each glass.

  3. Serve chilled.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

  3. Tea + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Strong tea
Provides the main liquid base and its tannic, aromatic flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the sharpness of the citrus.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness, fruity aroma and acidity to the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Egg white
Beaten foam traps air, giving the frozen punch a lighter, smoother texture.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture when stirred in or spooned on top.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg white before the mixture is completely frozen. A partly frozen mixture is slushy enough for the beaten egg white to fold in evenly and hold air. If it is fully frozen, the white cannot be incorporated, and the punch loses its light, smooth texture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, lemon, sugar, egg, cream. 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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