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An Excellent Method for Making Punch

A citrus punch made with lemon, sugar, water, brandy, rum, and optional porter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,058 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

An Excellent Method for Making Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the sugar over the lemons until it absorbs the yellow parts of the skins.

  2. Squeeze the lemon juice onto the sugar and press them together well with a bruiser.

Make the punch

  1. Mix the sugar and lemon juice with boiling water until the mixture is cool.

  2. If desired, strain the mixture to remove pulp before adding the spirits.

  3. Add equal parts brandy and rum to the mixture, adjusting to taste.

  4. For added richness, mix in about ½ pint of porter.

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. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemons
Supply acidity and aromatic oils from the skins, balancing the sweetness of the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws out oils from the lemon peel when rubbed on it.
Brandy and rum
Provide the main spirit base and warming aroma, adjusted to taste.
Porter
Adds deeper malty flavour and richness to the punch.

The step that matters

Rubbing the sugar over the lemons. Rubbing the sugar over the lemon skins lifts the fragrant oils from the zest into the sugar. If the rubbing is too light, the punch loses much of its citrus aroma and flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, rum. 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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