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Tea Punch

A chilled punch made with sherry, lemon peel, sugar, and green tea.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Green tea and tea share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Tea Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the peel from the lemons.

Make the punch

  1. Pour boiling tea over the lemon peel and sugar.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Once cool, add the sherry and, if desired, a little rum or brandy.

  4. Bottle and store; it will keep for months.

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. Green tea + teatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Lemon + teatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + green teatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + teatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sherry
Forms the main body of the punch and adds its characteristic flavour.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic oils and a bright citrus flavour to the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity and tannins of the tea.
Green tea
Adds tannins and a light bitterness that give the punch structure.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the sherry. Sherry is a delicate wine whose aromas are dulled or lost in very hot liquid, and alcohol evaporates when heated. Adding it only after the tea has cooled keeps its flavour intact.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sugar, green tea, tea):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, green tea, tea. 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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