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Drink

Cardinal Punch

A chilled cranberry and orange juice punch sweetened with sugar and finished with ginger ale.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Cardinal Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cranberry base

  1. Cook cranberries in 4 cups water until soft.

  2. Crush and drain through cheesecloth.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and 2 cups water for 5 minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the syrup to the cranberry juice and chill.

  2. Add orange juice and lemon juice.

  3. Just before serving, add ginger ale or charged water.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Cranberries
Provide the main flavour, colour and tartness, and their juice forms the punch's base.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the tartness of the cranberries and citrus.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and aroma to the cranberry juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Ginger ale or charged water
Adds carbonation, giving the punch lightness and a lively texture.

The step that matters

Just before serving, add ginger ale or charged water.. Carbonation escapes quickly from warm or stirred liquids, so adding the fizzy component late and chilled keeps the punch bubbly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Peppermintfits less well
  4. Rosemaryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, 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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