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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a citrus and pineapple beverage sweetened with red and granulated sugar, served chilled with ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the red and granulated sugar in hot water.

  2. Mix the lemon and orange juices with the pineapple the day before serving.

  3. Do not add the sugar until the afternoon of serving.

Serve

  1. Add water just before serving.

  2. Serve in a large container, adding ice when ready to serve.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

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

Lemons
Provide the main acidity and bright flavour of the punch.
Oranges
Add sweetness and juice that balance the acidity of the lemons.
Pineapple
Adds fruity aroma and flavour, and its pieces add texture to the punch.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the sharp citrus acidity.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar late. The record says to hold the sugar until the afternoon of serving. Sugar pulls moisture and flavour from fruit over time, so adding it too early can make the fruit taste dull and the punch syrupy.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, 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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