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Drink

Claret Punch

A chilled claret-based punch with syrup, cloves, fruit, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Claret Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour the syrup into a tumbler.

  2. Half fill the tumbler with small pieces of ice.

  3. Add the tincture of cloves and shake to mix the ingredients.

  4. Pour in the claret.

  5. Top with a thin slice of lemon and add the strawberries, raspberries, or currants.

  6. Drink through straws.

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. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + white curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

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

  3. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Syrup + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Clove + white curranttop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Claret
Provides the main wine flavour and body of the punch.
Syrup
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the wine and fruit.
Tincture of cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the drink.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, clove, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, clove, lemon. 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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