Name: Welch Punch
Ingredients: 3 lemons; 1 orange; 1 quart water; 1 cup sugar; 1 pint Welch's grape juice

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 ↓

Welch Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Squeeze the juice of three lemons and one orange into a quart of water.
Add one cup of sugar and one pint of Welch's grape juice.
Stir well and serve cold.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,771 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + grapetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,412 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Orange: Adds citrus aroma and extra juice with mild sweetness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that offsets the tartness of the citrus and grape juice.
Grape juice: Provides the main fruit flavour, colour and sweetness.