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 ↓
Delicious Fruit Punch
Ingredients
Directions
Extract juice from lemons and oranges.
Mix the juice with pineapple and loganberry juice.
Add sugar and chill the mixture on ice until ready to use.
Mix with water and cracked ice before serving.
Serve very cold.
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.
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Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together709 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,664 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,771 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, pineapple, grape, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Mangofits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against orange, pineapple, grape, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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