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Drink

Tomato Punch

A chilled fruit punch made with tomatoes, apples, sugar, ginger, lemon juice, preserved ginger, and maraschino liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch base

  1. Cook the tomatoes, water, apples, sugar, and ginger together until the apples are tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the lemon juice, preserved ginger, and maraschino.

  2. Freeze the mixture until slushy.

  3. Serve in glasses.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and colour of the punch.
Apples
Cook down to pectin-rich pulp that thickens the punch and adds body.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the tomato acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that sharpens the sweetness.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds aromatic cherry-almond flavour and some alcohol, which keeps the frozen mixture slushy.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cooked mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked tomato and apple through a fine sieve removes skins and seeds and produces a smooth pulp. Leftover solids would give a gritty texture in the finished slush.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, ginger, lemon. 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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