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Strawberry Punch

A chilled strawberry punch made with strawberries, sugar, orange and lemon juice, champagne, egg whites, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Strawberry Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Crush the strawberries with the sugar and let them stand for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture through a bag.

  3. Add the orange and lemon juice, then let it chill on ice until ready to serve.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add an equal measure of ice water, the champagne, and the beaten egg whites.

  2. Place the punch in a bowl with a large piece of ice and serve in tall glasses.

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. Orange + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and sweetness once crushed into the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws juice out of the crushed strawberries.
Egg whites
Beaten in at the end to add a light, frothy texture to the punch.
Champagne
Adds sparkle and a dry, fresh note to the finished punch.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites just before serving. Beaten egg whites foam and gradually deflate in liquid, so they should be added at the last moment to keep the punch light and frothy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Pineapplefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, champagne, egg. 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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