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Drink

Delicious Summer Drink

A chilled tea-based punch with pineapple, cherries, orange peel, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,664 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Delicious Summer Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Brew 1 pint of Ceylon tea and let it cool.

  2. In a large pitcher, combine the cooled tea and 1 quart of ice cold mineral water.

Flavour and serve

  1. Add 3 tablespoons of pineapple and 2 tablespoons of Maraschino cherries.

  2. Add a few slices of orange peel.

  3. Sweeten with sugar to taste and stir well.

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. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Tea + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

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

  3. Tea + pineappletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Ceylon tea
Provides the base flavour and tannins that give the punch its brisk, dry character.
Pineapple
Adds fruity sweetness and a tangy aroma to the punch.
Maraschino cherries
Add sweetness and a concentrated cherry flavour to the punch.
Orange peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils that scent the punch as it steeps.

The step that matters

Let the tea cool before combining. Hot tea poured over ice-cold water and fruit will melt the ice too quickly and dilute the punch, and heat can make tea taste bitter and astringent. Cooling it first keeps the flavour balanced.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, 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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