Skip to main content
Drink

Sauterne Punch

A chilled punch made with sauterne wine, citrus juice, sherry, curacao, soda water, eggs, and assorted fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sauterne Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the punch base

  1. Juice the oranges and lemons into a large bowl.

  2. Add the sauterne, sherry, curacao, and soda water.

  3. Sweeten with sugar syrup to taste and add assorted fruits.

  4. Add a large piece of ice to the mixture.

Make the egg foam

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolk and sugar until light and thick.

  2. Beat the egg white to a stiff foam and fold it into the yolk mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a glass, add brandy or rum, and stir or shake well.

  4. Garnish with a little grated nutmeg.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Sauterne
Provides the wine base and mild sweetness that defines the punch's flavour.
Egg white
Whipped to a stiff foam, it adds a light, airy texture to the drink.
Egg yolk
Beaten with sugar, it adds richness and body to the foam.
Oranges
Their juice adds sweetness and fruity aroma to the punch.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the wine and syrup.

The step that matters

Folding the stiff egg white into the yolk mixture. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped white. Stirring or deflating it hard loses the foam, leaving the drink flat and dense.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, sherry, sugar, syrup, egg, brandy):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sherry, sugar, syrup, egg, brandy. 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

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes