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Strawberry Punch

A chilled fruit punch made from mashed strawberries, water, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch base

  1. Mash the strawberries to a pulp.

  2. Pour the water and lemon juice over the strawberries.

  3. Let it stand in a cool place for 4 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and stir in the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Strain again and set aside in a cool place until ready to serve.

  3. Serve in tumblers over cracked ice.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour, and their juice forms the punch base.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour.

The step that matters

Letting it stand in a cool place for 4 hours. Standing draws juice and flavour out of the mashed strawberries into the water. The cool place slows spoilage while this happens, so the mixture should not be left at room temperature.

“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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