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Sauce

457 Punch Sauce

A punch sauce made with sugar, butter, rice flour, rum, marsala, brandy, lemon rind, orange peel, water, orange juice, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

457 Punch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 2 oz. sugar and ½ cup water with the lemon rind and orange peel in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes, then remove the peels.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the rice flour with a little cold water until smooth, then stir the mixture into the boiling syrup.

  2. Add the butter in small pieces.

  3. Add the strained juice of ½ orange and 1 teaspoon lemon juice.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the rum, marsala, and brandy without boiling further.

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. Lemon + orangetop 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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Rice flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body to the sauce.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavour; kept off the boil to preserve its character.

The step that matters

Add the rum, marsala, and brandy without boiling further. Alcohol evaporates readily when heated, so boiling drives off aroma and flavour and can leave the sauce harsher. Adding the spirits off the heat keeps their character in the finished sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, rice, flour, rum, brandy, orange. 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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