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Drink

Cold Punch

Cold Punch is a chilled beverage made with water, sugar, wine, lemon syrup, ginger, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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 ↓

Cold Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine cold water and white sugar. Heat until the sugar is dissolved.

Flavour and finish

  1. Add white wine, lemon syrup, and ginger; heat until hot but not boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in fine rum.

  3. As the punch cools, bottle it and cork well.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. White wine + rumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Ginger + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the wine and lemon.
White wine
Forms the main body of the punch and adds acidity and fruity flavour.
Fine rum
Adds strength and warm aroma, and helps preserve the punch.
Lemon syrup
Adds citrus brightness and acidity to offset the sugar.

The step that matters

Do not let the punch boil after adding the wine. Alcohol and delicate aromas evaporate when heated strongly, so heating only until hot keeps the wine's flavour and the punch's strength. Boiling also dulls the fresh lemon character.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, white wine, syrup, ginger, rum):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, syrup, ginger, 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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