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Drink

Fruit Cup

A chilled fruit beverage made from lemon rind, pineapple, berries, sugar, and ice water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Thinly peel the yellow rind from the lemons and squeeze the juice over it in an earthen bowl. Let it stand overnight.

  2. Thinly slice a very ripe pineapple and let it sit overnight in 3 pounds of powdered sugar.

  3. Crush 1 quart of berries and let them sit overnight in ½ pound of powdered sugar.

  4. If not prepared the day before, do this early in the morning to allow the juices to incorporate with the sugar for at least 12 hours.

Make the punch

  1. After preparation, strain off the juice, pressing all of it out of the fruit.

  2. Mix the juice with 2 pounds of powdered sugar and 3 quarts of ice-water, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Strain again through a muslin or fine sieve and refrigerate until ready to use.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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 sharp acidity and fragrant oils from the rind and juice that balance the sweetness.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and, dissolved in the juice, gives the punch its body and balance.
Berries
Add fruity flavor and color, released into the juice as they are crushed and steeped in sugar.
Ice-water
Dilutes the concentrated juice to a drinkable strength and keeps the punch cold.

The step that matters

Let the fruit sit in sugar for at least 12 hours. Sugar draws water and flavor out of the fruit by osmosis, pulling juice from the cut fruit. Cutting this short yields a weaker, less flavorful juice, and undissolved sugar can leave the punch gritty.

“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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