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Fruit Punch

A chilled fruit punch made with lemon juice, orange, pineapple, sugar, cherries, and sparkling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the sugar in 4 pints of water until dissolved, then cool.

  2. Mix the cooled sugar water with the lemon juice and 6 quarts of water.

  3. Add the grated pineapple and Maraschino cherries to the mixture.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, add 4 quarts of White Rock or Apollinaris water.

  2. Pour the punch over a block of ice.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

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

Lemons
Provide the acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the punch.
Grated pineapple
Adds fruity flavor and some body to the punch.
Maraschino cherries
Add sweetness and a fruity flavor to the punch.
White rock or apollinaris water
Adds carbonation, giving the punch fizz and lightness.

The step that matters

Add the sparkling water just before serving. Carbonated water loses its dissolved carbon dioxide over time, so fizz fades if it is added too early. Adding it at the last moment keeps the punch lively and bubbly when poured.

Swap the pineapple

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

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