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Strawberry Nectar

A sweetened fruit beverage made with strawberry, orange, pineapple, and sparkling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Strawberry Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water and sugar together to form a syrup for 10 minutes.

Combine and strain

  1. While hot, add strawberry juice, orange juice, and grated pineapple to the syrup.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes, then strain.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 4 quarts of Apollinaris and sweeten to taste, being careful not to make it too sweet.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Strawberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together726 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the drink and dissolves into the water to form a syrup.
Strawberry juice
Provides the main strawberry flavour and colour.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness.
Grated pineapple
Adds fruity aroma and body to the drink.
Apollinaris
Supplies carbonation, giving the nectar its sparkle.

The step that matters

Sweetening after adding Apollinaris. The syrup and fruit are already sweet, and sugar becomes harder to judge once the sparkling water is added. Adding sweetener gradually and tasting between additions prevents an overly sweet drink, since sweetness is easy to add but impossible to remove.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, strawberry, pineapple. 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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