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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a mixed fruit beverage made with oranges, lemons, pineapple, strawberries, raspberries, sugar, effervescent water, and ice.

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

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice the oranges and lemons after peeling them.

  2. Cut the pineapple into dice.

  3. Halve the strawberries and add them to the raspberries.

  4. Mix all the fruit together, layering with granulated sugar, using 2 cups in total.

  5. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.

Add the liquid and serve

  1. Pour in the effervescent water or clear spring water.

  2. Place a large lump of ice in a chilled bowl and pour the mixture over it.

  3. Taste before serving and add more sugar if needed.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 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

Granulated sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws juice out of the fruit as it stands.
Strawberries
Add sweet aroma and soft texture to the punch.
Red raspberries
Add tart flavor and bright color to the punch.
Effervescent water
Adds lightness and fizz, diluting the fruit and sugar into a drinkable punch.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes. Standing lets the sugar dissolve and draw juice from the fruit, creating a syrup that flavors the punch. Adding the carbonated water too early would lose fizz, so it is poured in only after this rest.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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