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Drink

For Punch or Puddings

A syrup made from orange juice, sugar, and Seville orange peel, used for punch or pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

For Punch or Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Squeeze the oranges and strain the juice into a large pot.

  2. Boil the juice with 1.5 pounds of sugar, skimming well.

  3. Let it cool, then bottle and cork tightly.

Make the syrup

  1. For the syrup, infuse the orange or lemon peel in boiling water overnight in a sealed container.

  2. Strain the liquid and let it settle.

  3. Dissolve 2 pounds of double-refined sugar in the clear liquid over gentle heat to make syrup.

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 + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and acidity of the punch.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the juice and gives the syrup body and good keeping quality.
Seville orange or lemon peel
Releases aromatic citrus oils into the water, giving the syrup its fragrance.
Boiling water
Draws flavour out of the peel during the overnight infusion.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar over gentle heat. Too much heat can scorch or caramelise the sugar, darkening the syrup and giving it a burnt taste. Gentle heat dissolves the sugar fully while keeping the flavour clean and the colour pale.

“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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