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Drink

Punch a LA Naples

A punch made with rhubarb, citrus juices, ginger syrup, and sparkling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Punch a LA Naples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rhubarb base

  1. Chop the rhubarb and combine it with 2 cups of water, a bay leaf, and 1 cup of sugar in a pot. Simmer until the rhubarb is soft.

  2. Strain the mixture and add orange juice, pineapple juice, lemon juice, and ginger syrup. Mix well.

Add tea and citrus

  1. In a separate bowl, pour 1 quart of boiling water over 1 tablespoon of tea. Cover and let it cool, then strain.

  2. Add the strained tea, juice of 3 lemons, and juice of 2 oranges to the rhubarb mixture. Mix well and strain again.

Serve

  1. Pour the punch over a block of ice in a punch bowl.

  2. Just before serving, add 2 quarts of Apollinaris water and garnish with strawberries or slices of pineapple or orange.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Rhubarb + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  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

Rhubarb
Gives the punch its tart flavour and body once simmered and strained.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the tartness of the rhubarb and citrus.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances sweetness.
Tea
Adds tannins that give the punch a subtle astringent, dry backbone.

The step that matters

Strain the rhubarb mixture fully before adding the liquids. Rhubarb fibres and pulp left in the liquid make the punch cloudy and gritty. Straining twice removes solids so the drink stays clear and smooth.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rhubarb, sugar, orange, lemon, ginger, syrup, tea):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, orange, lemon, ginger, syrup, tea. 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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