Name: Hallowe'en Punch
Ingredients: 5 quarts sugar; 1 quart boiling water; juice of 36 lemons; juice of 36 oranges; juice from 1 quart can pineapple; juice from 1 bottle Maraschino cherries; cold water to taste; small pieces of pineapple; Maraschino cherries for garnish

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 ↓

Hallowe'en Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Make simple syrup by dissolving 5 quarts of sugar in 1 quart of boiling water.
Let the syrup stand overnight.

Mix and serve

Add the juice of 36 lemons, 36 oranges, pineapple juice, and cherry juice to the syrup.
Add cold water to dilute the mixture to your taste.
Cut the pineapple into small pieces.
Serve the punch in a large pumpkin, adding pineapple pieces and cherries to each cup with a toothpick in a cherry.

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 + pineappletop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Sugar: Dissolved into boiling water to form a syrup that sweetens the punch.
Lemons: Provide acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Oranges: Add citrus acidity and fruity flavour to the punch.
Pineapple juice: Adds fruity sweetness and acidity to the punch base.
Maraschino cherry juice: Adds fruity flavour and colour to the punch.