Name: Mint Punch
Ingredients: 50 mint leaves; juice of 12 oranges; 1 cup Canton ginger water; 10 cloves; 3 sticks cinnamon; 4 pounds sugar; cracked ice

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mint Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Bruise the mint leaves and crush the mint stalks if using them.
Juice the oranges.
Prepare the Canton ginger water by cooking 1/8 pound of Canton ginger with 10 cloves and 3 sticks of cinnamon in water.

Make and serve

Strain the ginger water and mix it with the mint leaves, orange juice, and sugar.
Serve over cracked ice.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Mint leaves: Bruised leaves release their aromatic oils, giving the punch its fresh mint flavour.
Orange juice: Provides acidity and fruity flavour that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar: Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the orange juice.
Canton ginger water: Adds spicy ginger flavour and depth to the punch.

Swap the mint

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

Cardamomfits better
Allspicefits better
Nutmegfits better
Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, ginger, clove, cinnamon, sugar. 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.