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Drink

Claret Punch

A chilled punch made with claret, Apollinaris water, citrus juices, raisins, cinnamon, sugar, and fruit garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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

  1. Seed the raisins and soak them in cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 25 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and add the cinnamon, sugar, and lemon rind.

  4. Boil together for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the orange juice and lemon juice, then strain again.

  6. Chill the mixture thoroughly.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a punch bowl, place a block of ice.

  2. Pour in the claret, then the chilled mixture, and finally the Apollinaris water.

  3. Garnish with slices of orange, pineapple, preserved cherries, and a sprig of mint.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  5. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Soaked and simmered to release their sweetness and flavour into the liquid.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and helps balance the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances its sweetness.
Claret
Forms the wine base that gives the punch its body and main flavour.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity, rounding out the citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture thoroughly. Adding warm syrup to the wine and carbonated water would dilute the drink quickly and lose its fizz. Chilling first keeps the punch cold and lively when served.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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