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Drink

The Duke of Norfolk's Punch

A citrus punch made with lemon and orange peel, brandy, sugar, egg white, water, and fresh citrus juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The Duke of Norfolk's Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the brandy

  1. Steep the lemon and orange parings in 1 gallon of brandy for 24 hours in a covered vessel.

  2. Strain the brandy from the parings.

Make the syrup

  1. Clarify the sugar with the egg white in 1 gallon of spring water.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes and skim.

  3. Allow the syrup to cool.

Combine and age

  1. Mix the strained brandy with the cooled syrup and the strained juice of 18 oranges and 18 lemons.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a large vessel.

  3. Cover the vessel.

  4. Let it stand for 6 weeks before bottling.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Brandy
Extracts flavour from the citrus peel and gives the punch its alcoholic base.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the citrus juice.
Lemons
Provide sharp acidity and aromatic oils from the peel and juice.
Oranges
Add sweetness, aroma and juice that softens the punch's flavour.
Egg white
Binds impurities in the sugar syrup so they can be skimmed off, clarifying it.

The step that matters

Clarify the sugar with the egg white. Heating the egg white with the sugar syrup lets it coagulate and trap impurities, which rise as scum to be skimmed. Skipping or rushing this leaves the punch cloudy and less clear.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

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