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Drink

Fruit Punch

A chilled beverage made with lemon, orange, pineapple, strawberry syrup, maraschino cherries, and sparkling water.

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 ↓

Fruit Punch

makes 1.5 gallons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water and sugar for 10 minutes to make syrup.

Combine and cool

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

  2. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes to cool.

  3. Strain the mixture and add ice water to make 1.5 gallons.

Serve

  1. Add cherries and Apollinaris.

  2. Serve in a punch bowl with a large piece of ice.

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 + strawberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Orange + strawberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together726 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the punch and, dissolved in boiling water, forms the base syrup.
Lemons
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the punch.
Oranges
Adds acidity and fruity aroma to the punch.
Strawberry syrup
Adds sweetness and strawberry flavour.
Apollinaris (sparkling water)
Adds carbonation, giving the punch lightness and fizz.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes to cool. Cooling the hot syrup before adding the juices and fruit keeps the citrus flavour fresh and prevents the added ice water and sparkling water from melting or losing fizz too quickly.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

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