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An Excellent Method for Making Punch

A punch made by rubbing sugar on lemons, squeezing juice, mixing with boiling water, and adding brandy, rum, and optional porter.

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 for Making Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

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

  2. Squeeze the lemon juice onto the sugar and mix well using a bruiser.

Make the punch

  1. Combine the mixture with boiling water until it cools to your taste.

  2. Add equal parts brandy and rum, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Strain the mixture if desired to remove pulp.

  4. If using only rum, add ½ pint of porter for a softer punch.

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
Supply acidity and aromatic oils from the peel and juice that balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws the oils out of the lemon peel.
Brandy
Adds spirited body and warm aroma to the punch.
Rum
Adds spirited body and sweetness, rounding out the brandy.
Porter
Softens the punch with its malty body and gentle bitterness.

The step that matters

Rubbing the sugar over the lemons. Sugar must rub against the peel to absorb the fragrant oils held in the yellow zest. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the punch tasting flat and less aromatic, because the oils are what give citrus its scent and flavour.

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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