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Drink

Cardinal Punch

A chilled punch made with water, sugar, orange juice, lemon juice, brandy, Curacao, and tea infusion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Cardinal Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling water and sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add orange juice, lemon juice, and tea infusion to the syrup.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture until it reaches a mushy consistency.

  2. Stir in the brandy and Curacao, then continue freezing.

Serve

  1. Serve in frappé 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + teatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

  3. Orange + teatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

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

  4. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

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

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

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

Sugar
Sweetens the punch and lowers the freezing point, keeping the texture soft and slushy.
Brandy
Alcohol lowers the freezing point, so the punch stays partly soft rather than freezing solid.
Curacao
Adds orange aroma and sweetness, and its alcohol also keeps the mixture slushy.
Orange juice
Adds fruit flavor, sweetness and acidity to the base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavor.
Tea infusion
Adds tannin and a light, dry background flavor to the fruit base.

The step that matters

Freeze until mushy, then stir in the spirits. Sugar and alcohol lower the freezing point, so the mixture stays slushy rather than solid. Freezing too long turns it into hard ice, and the brandy and Curacao must be added before that point to keep the texture even.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, brandy, tea. 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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