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Excellent Punch

A chilled punch made from barley-water, lemon peel, lemon juice, brandy, optional champagne or Madeira, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and champagne work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 169 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Excellent Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Combine barley-water and lemon peel.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Add lemon juice and brandy.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill in ice for 4 hours.

  2. Optionally add a little champagne or Madeira before serving.

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 + champagnetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 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

Barley-water
Forms the base liquid that carries the other flavours.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances sweetness.
Brandy
Adds spirit strength, warmth and aroma to the punch.
Lemon peel
Its oils add aromatic lemon flavour as it steeps in the liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to offset the sharpness of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Sweeten to taste. Cold dulls our perception of sweetness, so a punch sweetened at room temperature can taste flat once chilled. Taste again after chilling and adjust before serving, since sugar is easier to add than to remove.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, brandy, champagne, 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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