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Drink

Yule Punch

A festive punch made with strawberry or currant syrup, citrus juices, pineapple, water, ice, garnished with cherries and holly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Yule Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. In a large bowl, combine the strawberry or currant syrup with the juice of the oranges and lemons.

  2. Add the grated pineapple and sweeten to taste.

  3. Pour in cold water until the mixture reaches the desired consistency and strength.

  4. Transfer the punch to a punch bowl.

Serve

  1. Add a lump of ice.

  2. Garnish with Maraschino cherries and a sprig of holly tied to each handle.

  3. Serve in punch glasses.

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. Strawberry + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Strawberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together726 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberry or currant syrup
Provides the main flavour and sweetness, and most of the colour.
Orange and lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetness.
Grated pineapple
Adds fruit body and a tropical sweetness to the punch.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (strawberry, orange, pineapple):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against strawberry, orange, pineapple. 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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