Name: Claret Punch
Ingredients: 1 bottle claret; ½ cup ice water; 3 lemons, sliced; ¾ cup powdered sugar; pounded ice

Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Claret Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

Cover the sliced lemons with sugar and let stand for 10 minutes.
Add ice water and stir well.
Pour in the claret.

Serve

Place pounded ice in each glass before filling with the mixture.

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.

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

Claret: Forms the wine base that gives the punch its body and deep colour.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the punch and draws juice from the lemons as it stands.
Lemons: Add acidity and bright citrus aroma that balance the sweetness of the wine.

“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.