Name: Claret Punch
Ingredients: 1 quart cold water; Few shavings of lemon rind; 1 cup Hiawatha raisins; 2 cups sugar; 1½ cups orange juice; 1 cup lemon juice; 2 inches of cinnamon stick; 1 pint claret wine

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Claret Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Soak the raisins in cold water.
Bring the water to a boil and boil for 20 minutes.
Strain the mixture and add sugar, cinnamon, and lemon rind. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

Finish the punch

Add the fruit juices, cool, strain, and mix in the claret wine.
Dilute with ice water before serving.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Claret wine: Provides the main flavor and color of the punch.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sugar.
Orange juice: Adds fruity sweetness and body to the punch.
Hiawatha raisins: Softened in water to add fruit flavor to the base liquid.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, orange, cinnamon, wine):

Vanillafits better
Limefits better
Figfits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, orange, cinnamon, wine. 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.