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Vichy Punch

A citrus punch with sugar, nuts, cherries, mint, ice, and Vichy water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Vichy Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Juice the oranges and lemons into a large bowl.

  2. Add the loaf sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Mix in the pistachio nuts, maraschino cherries, and broken mint leaves.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add the crushed ice and Vichy water.

  2. Stir gently to combine and serve immediately.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the citrus juice to provide sweetness that balances the acidity.
Lemons
Provide acidity and bright citrus flavour that cuts the sweetness.
Oranges
Add juice, sweetness and citrus aroma to the punch.
Vichy water
Adds lively carbonation that gives the punch its fizz.

The step that matters

Add the Vichy water just before serving. Carbonation escapes quickly from opened bottles, so adding the Vichy water late and stirring gently keeps the punch fizzy and prevents it from going flat.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar, pistachio, mint. 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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