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An Excellent Method of Making Punch

A citrus punch made with lemon, sugar, water, brandy, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,058 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

An Excellent Method of Making Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemon sugar

  1. Rub the sugar over the lemons until it absorbs the yellow part of the skins.

  2. Place the sugar in a bowl and squeeze the lemon juice over it.

  3. Press the sugar and lemon juice together well to enhance flavor.

Make the punch

  1. Mix the sugar and lemon mixture with boiling water until cool.

  2. Add equal parts brandy and rum to the mixture and stir well.

  3. Taste and adjust the liquor quantity as desired.

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. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. 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
Their juice adds acidity and their skin oils add aroma to the punch.
Double-refined sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Brandy
Adds spirit strength and warm, fruity depth to the punch.
Rum
Adds spirit strength and a rounded, sweet flavor to the punch.

The step that matters

Rubbing the sugar over the lemons. Sugar rubbed on the lemon peel draws out the aromatic oils from the yellow zest, which flavor the whole punch. Pressing the sugar and juice together then dissolves the sugar into the juice, so the sweetness and flavor blend evenly before the water is added.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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