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Sportsman’s Punch

A punch made with water, whisky, sugar, brandy, ale, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Whisky and brandy work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 330 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sportsman’s Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the jug.

Make the punch

  1. Boil the sugar and water together with the lemon peel and juice.

  2. Pour the mixture into the jug.

  3. Add the cold brandy.

  4. Finally, add the boiling ale.

  5. Serve at once.

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. Whisky + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  4. Whisky + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and lemon 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

Lump sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the lemon juice and spirits.
Old pale brandy
Adds strong spirit flavour and warmth to the punch.
Whisky
Provides the main spirit base and strong flavour.
Old ale
Adds malty body and a light bitterness to the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the sweetness.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against whisky, sugar, brandy. 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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