Skip to main content
Drink

Roman Punch

A chilled cocktail made with water, lemon juice, sugar, sherry, rum, and Curaçao.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Roman Punch

Why it works: Sherry and rum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Roman Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine water, lemon juice, sugar, sherry, Jamaica rum, Croix rum, and Curaçao in a large bowl, then mix well until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Freeze the mixture as you would when making ice cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sherry + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Wine + rumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the sweetness and the spirits.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and lowers its freezing point, keeping the frozen texture softer.
Sherry
Adds wine flavor and aroma and lowers the freezing point slightly.
Jamaica rum
Contributes strong rum flavor and alcohol that keeps the frozen mixture from setting hard.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture as you would when making ice cream. Sugar and alcohol both lower the freezing point of water, so this mixture freezes more slowly and softer than plain water. Freezing it like ice cream gives a smooth, scoopable texture rather than a solid block of ice.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, sherry, 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.

You might also like

Lemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesWine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipes