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Drink

Iced Punch

A chilled alcoholic beverage with egg white foam, sugar, mint, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and mint work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 442 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Iced Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a glass, combine the wine or whiskey with the ice water.

  2. Whip the egg white until stiff and mix in the sugar.

  3. Add the whipped egg white mixture to the glass.

  4. Stir in a little mint and pounded ice.

  5. Serve immediately while ice cold.

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. Wine + minttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + minttop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + minttop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together907 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Whipped to stiff foam, it adds a light, frothy texture to the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and helps stabilize the whipped egg white.
Wine or whiskey
Forms the base spirit that gives the punch its main flavor and strength.

The step that matters

Whip the egg white until stiff. Egg white must be whipped to stiff peaks so it holds air and stays foamy when added to the cold liquid. Under-whipped white will collapse and leave the punch flat and watery.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, egg, sugar. 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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