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Drink

Fruit Punch

A sweet citrus and pineapple punch served chilled with ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 4 cups of sugar in 2 quarts of water for 10 minutes.

  2. Cool the mixture and add 1 gallon of cold water.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir in the strained juice of 6 oranges and 12 lemons.

  2. Add 1 can of grated pineapple.

  3. Serve with cracked ice and optional slices of oranges, lemons, and tart jelly.

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

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

  5. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

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

Sugar
Dissolved in boiling water to make a sweet syrup that balances the citrus acidity.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness-balancing fruit acidity and bright citrus aroma to the punch.
Lemon juice
Provides sharp acidity that gives the punch its tart, refreshing character.
Grated pineapple
Adds fruit body, pulp and additional sweet tropical flavour.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, pineapple):

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, pineapple. 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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