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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a chilled beverage made from pineapple, citrus juices, preserved fruit, ice water, and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the punch base

  1. Squeeze the juice from the grated pineapple, lemons, and oranges into a bowl.

  2. Strain the juice and add the preserved cherries and strawberries.

  3. Sweeten to taste and let the mixture stand for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, add 2 quarts of ice water and 1 quart of pounded ice.

  2. Serve in glasses, adding claret or Apollinaris 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetening.
Oranges
Contribute juice, sweetness and aroma to the punch base.
Grated pineapple
Adds sweetness, juice and tropical flavor to the base.
Preserved cherries
Add sweetness and fruit flavor as they steep in the juice.
Strawberries
Add fruity aroma and flavor to the punch.

The step that matters

Sweeten to taste and let the mixture stand for 3 hours. Citrus juice is quite tart, so sweetness must be adjusted before serving. Standing lets the fruit flavors blend and the sugar dissolve fully into the juice, so the punch tastes balanced rather than sharp or uneven.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange. 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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