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Drink

Tea Punch

A citrus and pineapple punch served chilled with fruit garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Tea Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch base

  1. Pour boiling water over tea and let it cool.

  2. Add lemon juice and strain the mixture.

  3. Add sliced oranges, grated pineapple, cold water, and sugar.

  4. Mix in candied cherries.

Add ice and serve

  1. For lemon ice, combine lemon ice, lemon juice, shredded pineapple, orange wine, and water.

  2. Serve with a cone of sherbet in the center of the punch bowl.

  3. Serve in champagne glasses topped with white grapes.

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. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  5. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tea
Provides a tannic, slightly bitter backbone that balances the sweetness of the punch.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavor that cuts through the sugar.
Oranges
Contribute fruity sweetness, aroma and juice to the punch.
Pineapple
Adds juiciness and tropical sweetness to the punch.
Lemon ice
Chills the punch while slowly melting and diluting it.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, lemon, orange, sugar, wine, grape):

  1. Peachfits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, lemon, orange, sugar, wine, grape. 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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