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Drink

Punch, Cold

A chilled beverage made with rum, curacao, white wine, powdered sugar, lemon, water, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and white wine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Punch, Cold

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine powdered sugar and lemon rind with water in a bowl, then stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Add rum, curacao, white wine, and lemon juice.

  3. Break some ice into the bowl 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.

  1. Rum + white winetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Rum + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Powdered sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.
Rum
Adds alcohol strength and a warm, full body to the punch.
Curacao
Adds orange-like aroma and extra sweetness.
White wine
Adds fruity flavor, light body and acidity.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and fragrant citrus aroma from the rind and juice.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully before adding the spirits. Powdered sugar dissolves slowly in cold liquid, and undissolved grains leave a gritty texture. Stirring until clear ensures the sweetness is evenly distributed through the punch.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, white wine, 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.

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