Name: Oxford Punch
Ingredients: 3 lemons; sugar; 2 Seville oranges; juice of 4 Seville oranges; juice of 10 lemons; 6 glasses calf's feet jelly; 2 quarts boiling water

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 ↓

Oxford Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the essence

Rub the rinds of 3 lemons with sugar to extract the essence.
Add the lemon essence, peel of 2 Seville oranges, and peel of 2 lemons to a large jug.

Make the punch

Pour in the juice of 4 Seville oranges and 10 lemons.
Add 6 glasses of liquid calf's feet jelly and stir well.
Pour in 2 quarts of boiling water and cover the jug.
Set the jug near the fire for 15 minutes.

Strain and serve

Strain the mixture through a sieve into a punch bowl.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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: Provide sharp acidity and aroma from both the rind oils and the juice.
Seville oranges: Add bright acidity and a bitter, fragrant citrus aroma from peel and juice.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and draws the aromatic oils out of the lemon rinds.
Calf's feet jelly: Adds gelatin for body and a richer, silkier mouthfeel to the punch.

“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.