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Fruit Punch

A chilled strawberry and citrus punch made with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fruit Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Mash the strawberries in a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon juice, orange juice, and water.

  3. Let the mixture stand in a cool place for 4 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture and add the sugar.

  5. Stir until the sugar is dissolved and strain again.

Serve

  1. Serve with crushed ice.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. 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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and color, and release juice when mashed.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright flavor to the punch.
Oranges
Add sweetness-balancing citrus flavor and extra juice.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand in a cool place for 4 hours. Standing lets the fruit flavors steep into the liquid and extracts more juice from the mashed strawberries. Keeping it cool slows spoilage during the long rest.

“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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