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Drink

Fruit Punch

A sweet beverage made with sugar syrup, tea, fruit juices, pineapple, cherries, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 10 minutes to make a syrup.

Combine and strain

  1. Add strong tea, cherry juice, strawberry juice, lemon juice, orange juice, and grated pineapple to the syrup.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 20 minutes, then strain it.

Serve

  1. Pour the strained mixture into a punch bowl over a piece of ice.

  2. Add candied cherries and water to the punch bowl.

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

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

  4. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Cherry + strawberrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolved into the syrup to add sweetness that balances the citrus acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that sharpens the sweetness and fruit flavours.
Strong tea
Contributes tannins for a slightly bitter, astringent backbone to the punch.
Cherry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and deep red colour.
Candied cherries
Adds chewy texture and extra sweetness as a garnish in the bowl.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar and water into a syrup. Sugar dissolves fully only when heated in water, so boiling makes a smooth syrup. Adding sugar cold would leave grains that do not blend evenly into the punch.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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