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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a mixed fruit beverage made with pineapple, oranges, lemons, grape juice, and water, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Peel and grate the pineapple, discarding the tough core.

  2. In a pot, add the grated pineapple and boiling water; simmer for 10 minutes.

Make the punch

  1. Stir in the hot tea and a syrup made by boiling water and sugar for 10 minutes.

  2. Set aside the mixture until cold, then strain it.

  3. Add the strained juice of the oranges and lemons, grape juice, and water. Mix well to combine.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Supplies the main fruit flavour and aroma, with juice that gives body to the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the citrus and tea.
Oranges and lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus flavour that cuts through the sweetness.
Grape juice
Adds fruity sweetness and colour to the punch.
Hot tea
Adds tannins for a light astringent depth that complements the fruit.

The step that matters

Set aside the mixture until cold, then strain it. Straining off the grated pineapple solids leaves a clear, smooth punch; adding warm liquid or skipping the cooling can leave it cloudy and cause the fruit to keep cooking and turn dull.

Swap the grape

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, tea, sugar, orange, lemon. 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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