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Raspberry Punch

A chilled raspberry beverage flavored with mint, lemon, sugar, and carbonated water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,998 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Raspberry Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Sprinkle the raspberries with sugar and let them stand for 1 hour to extract the juice.

  2. Press out the juice from the raspberries.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the lemon juice, slightly crushed mint leaves, and cold water to the raspberry juice, then mix well and let it stand for 30 minutes.

  2. Add ice and carbonated water just before serving.

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. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Mint + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and lemon 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

Raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour, with juice released by sugar.
Sugar
Draws juice out of the raspberries and adds sweetness that balances the lemon.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetness.
Fresh mint leaves
Add aroma; crushing them releases their oils into the punch.
Carbonated water
Adds fizz and lightness just before serving.

The step that matters

Add ice and carbonated water just before serving. Carbonation escapes over time, so adding fizzy water at the last moment keeps the punch lively. Diluting too early also weakens the flavour.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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