Name: Ginger Punch
Ingredients: ½ pound ginger root; 1 pint water; 2 pounds sugar; 10 pounds ice; juice of 24 oranges; juice of 6 lemons; 1 bottle maraschino cherries

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 ↓

Ginger Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ginger syrup

Cook the ginger root in 1 pint of water until tender, then strain.
Add 2 pounds of sugar to the ginger water and cook for 10 minutes, then cool.

Assemble the punch

Crack 10 pounds of ice.
Squeeze the juice from 24 oranges and 6 lemons.
Pour the fruit juice over the ice and add the ginger syrup.
Add the maraschino cherries.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Ginger root: Gives the punch its characteristic aromatic flavour when cooked into the syrup.
Sugar: Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the citrus juice.
Oranges and lemons: Provide the juice that gives the punch its acidity and fruity flavour.
Ice: Chills the punch and dilutes it slightly as it melts.