Name: Claret Punch
Ingredients: 1 quart cold water; few shavings of lemon rind; ½ cup raisins; ⅓ cup orange juice; 2 cups sugar; ⅓ cup lemon juice; 2 inch piece stick cinnamon; 1 pint claret wine

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 ↓

Claret Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Put raisins in cold water and bring to a boil.
Boil for twenty minutes, then strain.
Add sugar, cinnamon, and lemon rind, and boil for five minutes.

Finish and dilute

Stir in orange juice, then cool.
Strain again.
Pour in claret.
Dilute with ice 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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sugar: Sweetens the punch and balances the tartness of the citrus and wine.
Claret wine: Adds the main body, colour and deep fruity flavour to the punch.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the punch and offsets the sugar.
Orange juice: Adds fresh citrus flavour and some acidity to the punch.
Raisins: Simmered in the water, they release sweetness and fruity flavour into the base.
Stick cinnamon: Infuses warm, aromatic spice into the syrup during boiling.

Swap the raisin

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

Vanillafits better
Limefits better
Figfits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sugar, cinnamon, wine. 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.