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Drink

Punch a LA Eomain

A citrus punch made with lime, lemon or orange juice, sugar, egg whites, champagne, and optional rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Punch a LA Eomain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Squeeze the juice from the limes and lemons, and strain it through muslin.

  2. Mix the strained juice with the loaf sugar until well combined.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a light froth and gradually add them to the sugared juice.

Chill and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pewter vessel and place it in a tub filled with 2 seers of raw ice, stirring frequently to help it congeal.

  2. Ice the champagne and add it to the contents of the pewter vessel when ready to serve.

  3. Mix well and serve in green or amber-colored hock glasses.

  4. Add a little rum for extra flavor if desired.

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. Lime + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

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

  2. Champagne + rumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lime + rumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a light froth, they add a foamy, airy texture to the punch.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the citrus juice and balances its acidity.
Limes
Provide the main acidity and citrus flavor of the punch.
Champagne
Adds sparkle and a light, dry wine character to the punch.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture while it chills in the ice. Frequent stirring as the mixture cools helps it congeal evenly and keeps the egg white foam from separating or settling, giving a uniform texture before the cold champagne is added.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg, champagne, 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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