Name: Currant Punch
Ingredients: 1 tumbler currant jelly; 1 pint boiling water; ½ cup sugar; juice of 1 lemon; 1 quart plain cold water or sparkling water

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Currant Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

Whip the currant jelly in a bowl until frothy.
Add the boiling water and stir until combined.
Mix in the sugar and lemon juice.
Set aside to cool.

Serve

At serving time, add the cold water or sparkling water.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,270 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,256 recipes

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

Currant jelly: Supplies fruit flavor, color and sweetness once dissolved into the liquid.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the currants and lemon.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Boiling water: Melts the jelly so it dissolves evenly into the punch.
Sparkling water: Adds lightness and fizz when used in place of plain cold water.