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Drink

Fruit Punch

A mixed beverage of tea, fruit, wine, spirits, and seltzer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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

  1. In a punch bowl, combine the strong black tea, sliced oranges, lemon juice, diced pineapple, maraschino cherries, plain syrup, white wine, rum, and whiskey. Mix well and adjust sweetness with sugar to taste.

  2. Just before serving, add the seltzer and stir gently.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + rumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. White wine + rumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

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

  5. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Strong black tea
Adds tannin for a light bitter backbone that balances the sweetness.
Lemons
Provide acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sugar in the syrup.
White wine
Adds body and acidity while diluting the spirits slightly.
Seltzer
Adds carbonation, giving lift and a crisp texture.

The step that matters

Add the seltzer just before serving. Carbonation escapes quickly from warm or stirred liquid, so adding seltzer late and stirring gently keeps the punch lively and fizzy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (black tea, orange, pineapple, syrup, white wine, rum, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against black tea, orange, pineapple, syrup, white wine, rum, 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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