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Drink

Punch Block for Wedding or Formal Entertainment

A chilled fruit punch made with tea, citrus juices, pineapple, strawberries, 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 ↓

Punch Block for Wedding or Formal Entertainment

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tea

  1. Pour boiling water over the tea and steep for 6 minutes, then strain.

Make the syrup and fruit base

  1. Combine the strained juice of the lemons and oranges with the shredded pineapple.

  2. Make a syrup by boiling sugar and water for 5 minutes, then set the syrup aside.

  3. Mix the fruit, fruit juice, and tea, adding syrup to taste for sweetness.

  4. Keep cool until serving.

Serve

  1. Pour into a punch bowl over a large piece of ice.

  2. Add the Apollinaris water and sliced strawberries or other fruit.

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. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

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

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

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

Ceylon tea
Provides tannin for a dry, slightly bitter background that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the citrus juices.
Lemons and oranges
Supply acidity and bright citrus aroma that give the punch its character.
Pineapple
Adds fruit flavour and body to the punch base.
Strawberries
Add colour and fresh fruity flavour to the finished punch.

The step that matters

Adding syrup to taste. Citrus acidity and tea tannins vary by batch, so sweetness should be adjusted gradually and tasted, since sugar is needed to soften sharpness and bitterness.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, 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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