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Drink

Fruit Punch

A citrus and pineapple punch mixed with ginger ale and sweetened with sugar, served chilled with fruit garnish.

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

Prepare the base

  1. Juice the lemons and oranges, and combine with the pineapple and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator for a few hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the ginger ale to the juice mixture.

  2. Use 1 bottle of ginger ale for every 2 cups of juice.

  3. If the punch is too strong, dilute with water to taste.

  4. Place a large square of ice in the center of the punch bowl.

  5. Decorate with cherries, grapes, and pineapple.

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 + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Lemons
Provide acidity and bright citrus flavor that cuts the sweetness.
Oranges
Add juice, sweetness and aroma to the punch base.
Ginger ale
Adds carbonation and a light spiced sweetness, lifting the punch's texture.

The step that matters

Adding the ginger ale. Carbonation is lost quickly when liquids are stirred vigorously or poured from height, so ginger ale should be added gently and just before serving to keep the punch fizzy.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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