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Summer Drinks

A chilled cider-based punch flavored with sugar, nutmeg, ginger, brandy, noyeau, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Summer Drinks

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix 2 quarts of cider with sugar until fully dissolved.

  2. Add grated nutmeg, powdered ginger, brandy, and noyeau.

  3. Slice the lemon and add it to the mixture.

  4. Chill for 2 hours in ice before serving.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together404 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider
Forms the liquid base and supplies most of the punch's fruity flavour and volume.
Brandy
Adds warmth and body, and carries the spice and fruit aromas through the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the cider and lemon.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that lifts the sweetness of the cider.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully in the cider. Sugar dissolves much more readily in warm liquid than cold, and undissolved grains leave the punch gritty and unevenly sweet. Stirring until no crystals remain gives an even sweetness throughout.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, sugar, nutmeg, ginger, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, sugar, nutmeg, ginger, brandy. 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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