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Fruit Cocktails

A chilled fruit mixture of pineapple, cherry syrup, orange and lemon juices served in glasses with crushed ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fruit Cocktails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the cherry syrup, orange juice, and lemon juice.

  2. Pare and finely shred the pineapple.

  3. Dust the pineapple with powdered sugar and chill it on ice.

Assemble and serve

  1. In cocktail glasses, layer 1 tablespoon of pineapple, followed by 1 tablespoon of the fruit syrup, and top with 1 tablespoon of crushed ice.

  2. Serve with fruit forks or long-handled spoons.

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. Cherry + pineappletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cherry + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the main fruit body and bright, sweet flavor of the cocktail.
Cherry syrup
Adds sweetness and color to the fruit syrup that is layered into the glass.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the shredded pineapple and helps draw out its juices.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus aroma to the syrup mixture.

The step that matters

Dust the pineapple with powdered sugar and chill it on ice.. Sugar draws moisture out of the shredded fruit, so the pineapple should be dusted and kept cold just before layering. Chilling slows spoilage and keeps the fruit crisp and fresh-tasting until serving.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cherry, syrup, orange, pineapple, sugar. 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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