Skip to main content
Drink

Fruit Punch

A refreshing beverage made with lemon and orange juice, strawberry syrup, pineapple, cherries, Apollinaris water, sugar syrup, and tea.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare

  1. Juice the lemons and oranges.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the lemon juice, orange juice, strawberry syrup, grated pineapple, Maraschino cherries, and Apollinaris water.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, dissolve the sugar in 1 cup of water over medium heat to make a syrup. Add 1 cup of strong tea to the syrup and mix well.

Combine

  1. Combine the syrup with the fruit mixture and add enough water to make 1½ gallons of liquid.

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. Strawberry + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Orange + strawberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together726 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Lemon juice adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetness.
Oranges
Orange juice adds sweetness, acidity and fruity aroma to the punch.
Strawberry syrup
Adds concentrated strawberry flavor and sweetness to the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and dissolves into the water to form a syrup.
Strong tea
Adds tannins that give the punch a slight dryness and body.
Apollinaris water
Sparkling mineral water that adds carbonation and lightness to the punch.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

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

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes