Skip to main content
Drink

Punch, Ordinary

A citrus punch made with lemons, sugar, rum or brandy, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Punch, Ordinary

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the rinds of the lemons with lump sugar.

  2. Place the sugar in a punch bowl.

  3. Add the desired amount of rum or brandy.

  4. Squeeze the juice of the lemons into the bowl.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix all ingredients well before pouring in the boiling water.

  2. Stir continuously while adding the water.

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. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Lemons
Provide acidity and fragrant oils from the rinds and juice that brighten the punch.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws oils from the lemon rinds as it is rubbed in.
Rum or brandy
Adds the spirit base and aroma that give the punch its character.

The step that matters

Stir continuously while adding the water. Pouring boiling water into the mixture without stirring can leave sugar undissolved and uneven in flavour. Constant stirring disperses the hot water and helps the sugar dissolve evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rum. 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes