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Fish House Punch

A punch made with rum, brandy, Jamaica rum, citrus juice, sugar, tea, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fish House Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Squeeze the lemons and oranges the night before and pour the juice over the sugar.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 12 hours before mixing with the liquors.

  3. Grate the rind of 3 oranges, but peel all the others before squeezing.

Mix and strain

  1. Add all other ingredients and strain through fine muslin.

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. Rum + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Orange + teatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

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

  5. Rum + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 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

Sugar
Sweetens the punch and, dissolved in the citrus juice, balances its acidity.
Lemons
Provide sharp acidity that cuts the sweetness and the richness of the spirits.
Oranges
Add juice for body and sweetness, and rind oil for aroma.
New england rum
Provides the main spirit base and its strong flavour.
California brandy
Adds fruity, oaky spirit notes that round out the punch.
Very strong tea
Adds tannins that give the punch a dry, astringent backbone.

The step that matters

Letting the citrus stand with the sugar. Sugar draws water and oils out of citrus peel and pulp, dissolving the sugar and extracting aromatic oils. Standing for the full 12 hours lets this happen, so the base tastes balanced once the spirits are added.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rum, brandy, orange, sugar, tea):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, brandy, orange, sugar, 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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