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Fruit Punch

A chilled fruit punch made with sugar syrup, lemon juice, strawberry juice, pineapple, and fruit garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fruit Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water for 10 minutes, then let it cool.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the lemon juice, strawberry juice, and grated pineapple to the syrup.

  2. When ready to serve, add cracked ice, whole strawberries, and lemon slices.

  3. Substitute red cherries for strawberries 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. Strawberry + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + strawberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,206 recipes

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

  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 into the water to make a syrup that sweetens the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Strawberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavor and color of the punch.
Pineapple
Adds fruity sweetness and body, with pulp suspended in the punch.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, strawberry, pineapple):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, strawberry, 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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