Skip to main content
Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a chilled beverage made with water, sugar, lemon rind, bananas, pineapple, cherries, lemon juice, sparkling water, strawberries, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Banana and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 pint of water, 1 pound of sugar, and the chopped yellow rind of 1 lemon for 5 minutes.

  2. While hot, strain the mixture and add 2 sliced bananas, 1 grated pineapple, and ¼ pound of pitted cherries.

Assemble and serve

  1. When ready to serve, add the juice of 6 lemons.

  2. Place a square block of ice in a bowl, pour 2 quarts of Apollinaris over it, and add the fruit mixture.

  3. Finally, mix in 1 dozen sliced strawberries.

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. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Lemon + bananatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  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
Dissolves into the boiled liquid to sweeten the punch and balance the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sparkling water
Adds carbonation, giving the punch its lively fizz and lightness.
Pineapple
Contributes tropical fruit flavour and juice to the punch base.
Strawberries
Add fresh fruit flavour and colour to the finished punch.

The step that matters

Adding the sparkling water. Carbonation is lost quickly when liquid is stirred or left standing, so the sparkling water should be poured in last, just before serving, to keep the punch fizzy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, banana, 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesPineapple LemonadePineapple Lemonade18 recipesPineapple PunchPineapple Punch18 recipes