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Strawberry Punch

A chilled fruit punch made with tea, strawberries, mint, lemon and orange juices, sparkling water, ginger ale, and a simple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Strawberry Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve sugar in water to make syrup.

  2. Add the syrup to the mashed strawberries and fruit juices.

  3. Cool the mixture, then mix with tea and mint.

  4. Dilute the punch, sweeten if necessary, and add Apollinaris and ginger ale just before serving.

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. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mint + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour, and body when mashed into the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and brightens the fruit flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and rounds out the acidity of the citrus.
Ceylon tea
Contributes tannins and a subtle astringent, aromatic base to the punch.
Ginger ale
Adds carbonation and a light spiced sweetness just before serving.

The step that matters

Add the sparkling ingredients just before serving. Apollinaris and ginger ale are carbonated. Adding them early lets the bubbles escape as the punch sits, leaving it flat. Diluting and sweetening first also lets you adjust the balance before the fizz goes in.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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