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Sauterne Cup

A chilled fruit punch made with Sauterne wine, fresh fruit, lemon juice, sugar, and soda water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Sauterne Cup

Why it works: Pineapple and grape match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 709 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Sauterne Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine the sugar and lemon juice in a bowl.

  2. Set the mixture aside on ice for 1 hour.

  3. Stir the mixture well.

Assemble the punch

  1. Mix in the pineapple, strawberries, grapes, and cucumber.

  2. Pour the Sauterne wine over the mixture in a punch bowl.

  3. Add a block of ice and the chilled soda water.

  4. Garnish with leaves of citron‑aloes or lemon‑verbena if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Grape + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together819 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-p-menthene-8-thiol (grapefruit).

  3. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pineapple + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

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

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

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

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 balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the wine and keeps the punch fresh-tasting.
Sauterne wine
Forms the sweet, fruity wine base that gives the punch its body and flavor.
Soda water
Adds carbonation that lightens the texture and makes the punch sparkle.

The step that matters

Stir the sugar and lemon juice before chilling. Sugar dissolves much more readily in a liquid when it is stirred, so the sweetening is even. Undissolved sugar would leave the punch gritty and unevenly sweet.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, pineapple, grape, wine. 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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