Name: Orange Punch for Twenty People
Ingredients: Juice of 6 lemons; Pulp and juice of 24 oranges; 3 pounds sugar; 1 bottle maraschino cherries; 10 pounds cracked ice

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 ↓

Orange Punch for Twenty People

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

Juice the lemons and oranges, and combine the pulp and juice in a large bowl.
Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.
Add the maraschino cherries and mix well.

Serve

Serve in a punch bowl over cracked ice, providing toothpicks for the 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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar 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: Adds sweetness and balances the sourness of the citrus juice.
Lemons: Provide acidity and sharp citrus flavor that brightens the punch.
Oranges: Supply sweet-tart juice and pulp that give the punch its body and flavor.

“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.