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A sweetened beverage made from tamarinds, currants, raisins, cranberries, oatmeal, lemon peel, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Another Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tamarind base

  1. Boil 3 pints of water with tamarinds, currants, and raisins until reduced by a third.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Make the punch

  1. Mash cranberries in a cup of water.

  2. In another pot, boil 2 quarts and 1 pint of water with oatmeal and lemon peel.

  3. Add the mashed cranberries and sugar to taste.

  4. Optionally, add sherry.

  5. Boil for 30 minutes and strain.

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. Tamarind + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

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

  2. Tamarind + raisintop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Tamarinds
Provides the sour, tangy base flavour that defines the punch.
Currants
Add sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour as they simmer.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a rounder, deeper fruit body to the liquid.
Cranberries
Add tartness and fresh berry flavour once mashed into the liquid.
Oatmeal
Adds light body and a slightly thickened, smooth mouthfeel to the punch.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sourness of tamarind and cranberry.

The step that matters

Reducing the tamarind mixture by a third. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugars and acids from the tamarind, currants and raisins. Stopping too early leaves the base thin and weak, while boiling too long makes it overly intense and syrupy. Reducing by about a third gives a stronger base that the later liquids dilute.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tamarind, raisin, lemon, sugar, sherry):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, raisin, lemon, sugar, sherry. 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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