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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a chilled beverage made with sugar, water, lemon juice, pineapple, strawberries, raspberries, and shaved ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pineapple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Flavour and serve

  1. Add lemon juice and grated pineapple, then let it stand for 3 hours.

  2. Strain again.

  3. Add enough shaved ice to taste, along with chopped pineapple, halved strawberries, and whole raspberries if desired.

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 + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

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

Sugar
Dissolves into the water to sweeten the punch and gives it body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit flavour.
Grated pineapple
Releases juice and aroma into the liquid during the standing time.
Strawberries
Add fresh fruit flavour and colour to the finished punch.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand. Standing for 3 hours lets the lemon juice and grated pineapple steep into the syrup, so flavour develops before the second straining removes the solids.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe 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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