Name: Altrurian Punch
Ingredients: 12 lemons; 6 oranges; 1 pineapple, grated or chopped; 2 quarts strawberries (1 quart mashed, 1 quart whole); granulated sugar, to taste; water, to taste; ice, to taste

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 ↓

Altrurian Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Juice the lemons and oranges.
In a large bowl, combine the lemon juice, orange juice, grated pineapple, and strawberries.
Sweeten the mixture with granulated sugar to your taste.
Add water and ice to achieve your desired flavor and chill.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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 main sharp acidity that balances the sugar in the punch.
Oranges: Add sweetness and juice that softens the sharpness of the lemon.
Pineapple: Adds tropical sweetness and juicy body to the punch.
Strawberries: Add fruity aroma, color, and body from the mashed and whole berries.
Granulated sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the citrus.