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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a sweet beverage made with sugar, water, citrus juices, fruit juices, and fresh fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water for 20 minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the boiling syrup over lemon juice, orange juice, strawberry juice, cherry syrup, and chopped pineapple.

  2. When ready to serve, dilute with ice water.

  3. Add fresh strawberries, banana, and stoned cherries before serving.

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. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Strawberry + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together421 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Cherry + pineappletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the punch and, dissolved into boiling water, forms a syrup that blends the juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit flavors.
Strawberry juice
Provides the main strawberry flavor and color.
Chopped pineapple
Adds fruity flavor and bulk to the punch.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling syrup over the juices. The syrup must be fully boiled and dissolved so the sugar blends evenly into the juices. Adding fresh fruit too early, before serving, would let it soften and lose texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, strawberry, cherry, syrup, pineapple, banana. 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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