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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a sweet beverage made with water, sugar, citrus, pineapple, strawberries, grapefruit, and sparkling water.

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 ↓

Fruit Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and sugar together, then cool.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the oranges, lemons, pineapple, strawberries, and grapefruit to the mixture.

  2. Pour in the Apollinaris water.

  3. Dilute to taste if desired.

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 + grapefruittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + grapefruittop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Pineapple + grapefruittop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves in boiled water to form a syrup that sweetens the whole punch.
Lemons
Their juice adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Oranges
Their juice adds sweetness and a bright citrus aroma.
Strawberries
Add fruity flavour and a soft pink colour to the punch.
Apollinaris water
Sparkling water that adds fizz and dilutes the punch.

The step that matters

Cool the syrup before adding the fruit. Hot syrup would soften and partly cook the fresh fruit, dulling its flavour and texture. Cooling it first keeps the fruit bright and firm.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, lemon, grapefruit. 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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