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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a beverage made with grape juice, ginger ale, Apollinaris, ice, mint, cucumber rind, orange peel, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, peach or pineapple slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fruit Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. In a pitcher or punch bowl, arrange the ice, mint, cucumber rind, orange peel, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, and slices of peach or pineapple.

  2. Pour in the grape juice and ginger ale simultaneously.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the Apollinaris just before serving.

  2. If the punch is not sweet enough, stir in a little sugar syrup.

  3. To make sugar syrup, boil 1 cup sugar and ½ cup water for 10 minutes, then let it cool.

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. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Mint + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Grape + peachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Catawba grape juice
Provides the main flavour and sweetness of the punch base.
Ginger ale
Adds fizz and a spicy sweetness to the punch.
Apollinaris
Adds sparkling carbonation that lightens the drink when added last.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch when it is made into a syrup and stirred in.

The step that matters

Add the Apollinaris just before serving. Carbonation escapes from sparkling water over time and warms the drink, so adding it late keeps the punch lively and fizzy.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, ginger, mint, orange, peach, sugar, syrup):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, ginger, mint, orange, peach, sugar, syrup. 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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