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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a chilled beverage made with lemon juice, orange juice, sugar, water, maraschino cherries, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fruit Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water to make a syrup.

  2. Once the syrup is ready, remove from heat and add lemon juice and orange juice.

  3. Stir in maraschino cherries and mint.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. 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
Dissolves into the water to make a syrup that sweetens the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity to the liquid.
Maraschino cherries
Add sweet flavor and color to the punch.
Mint
Adds a fresh aroma.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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