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Drink

Punch a LA Ford

A citrus punch made with lemon peel, sugar, water, lemon juice, cognac, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cognac brandy and rum share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol, which smells allspice, anise. The science ↓

Punch a LA Ford

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Peel the lemons very thin and place the peels in an earthen vessel.

  2. Add the lump sugar and stir together with a wooden spoon for about 30 minutes to extract the essential oil.

  3. Pour boiling water over the peels and stir until the sugar dissolves.

Prepare the juice

  1. Cut the lemons in half and squeeze out the juice, straining out the seeds.

  2. Pour boiling water over the lemon juice and let it sit, then strain this water into the earthen vessel.

  3. Add half the quantity of lemon juice to the mixture.

Finish and bottle

  1. Taste the punch and adjust with more acid or sugar as needed.

  2. Strain it clear, then add 1 pint of cognac brandy and 1 pint of old rum for every 3 quarts of the mixture.

  3. Bottle immediately. The punch will keep for years and improves with age.

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. Cognac brandy + rumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Lemon + cognac brandytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Lemons
Provide the peel oil for aroma and the juice for acidity that balances the sugar.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws essential oil from the peel when stirred with it.
Cognac brandy
Adds alcohol and aromatic depth, and helps preserve the punch.
Old rum
Adds alcohol and rounded flavor, and helps preserve the punch.

The step that matters

Adjusting sweetness and acidity before adding spirits. Once the spirits are in, the balance is hard to correct, and alcohol makes sugar and acid taste less prominent. Tasting and adjusting the citrus and sugar first ensures the final punch is balanced.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cognac brandy, rum. 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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