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Tea Punch

A chilled tea-based punch with lemon, orange, sugar, Apollinaris water, and pineapple or raspberries.

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

  1. Steep 3 teaspoons of tea in 1 pint of boiling water for 5 minutes.

  2. Strain the tea.

  3. Add the sugar to the hot tea.

  4. Add the lemon juice and orange juice.

  5. Chill the mixture.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add the Apollinaris water and the diced pineapple or raspberries.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Tea + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon and orange juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor that cuts the sweetness.
Tea
Provides the main flavor and aroma of the punch.
Apollinaris water
Adds carbonation, giving the punch a lively, fizzy texture.

The step that matters

Add the Apollinaris water just before serving. Carbonation escapes from sparkling water over time, so adding it at the last moment keeps the punch fizzy and lively.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, lemon, orange, 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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