Skip to main content
Drink

Punch for Bottling

A punch made with green tea, rum, brandy, citrus, currant jelly, sugar, and Curacao, steeped and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rum and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,058 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Punch for Bottling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea

  1. Pour the boiling water over the green tea and let it steep, then strain.

Combine and steep

  1. Slice the lemons, remove the seeds, and add them to the hot tea.

  2. Stir in the currant jelly and sugar until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Add the rum and brandy, then let the mixture stand for 24 hours in a sealed stone jar.

Bottle and serve

  1. Strain the mixture, add the Curacao, and bottle it.

  2. Serve in punch glasses, adding water and ice as desired.

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. Rum + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Green tea + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Rum + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green tea
Provides tannin-based bitterness that balances the sweetness and rum.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the lemons and the alcohol.
Currant jelly
Adds fruit sweetness, body and a deeper color to the punch.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the punch and balances its sweetness.
Jamaica rum
Provides the main spirit base and a rich, aromatic flavor.
Brandy
Adds further alcohol strength and warm fruity aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 24 hours in a sealed stone jar. Steeping in a sealed container lets the citrus, tea and spirits blend slowly while limiting evaporation and contamination, so the flavors mellow and integrate before bottling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against green tea, rum, currant, 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesBlack Currant CordialBlack Currant Cordial11 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipes