Name: Fruit Punch
Ingredients: 1 quart boiling water; 1 heaping tablespoon Lewis London Dock Tea; 1½ cups sugar; juice of 1 orange; juice of 3 lemons; 1 box firm strawberries; 2 bottles mineral water

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

Make the tea

Pour boiling water over the tea and cover.
Let it cool.
Strain into a large bowl or pitcher with a large piece of ice.

Assemble and serve

Add sugar, orange juice, lemon juice, and strawberries, cutting larger berries in half.
Chill two bottles of mineral water on ice.
Pour the chilled mineral water over the fruit mixture.
Serve immediately.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together610 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Tea + orangetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together333 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Dock + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the citrus juices.
Lemons: Provide acidity and bright flavor that cut through the sweetness.
Strawberries: Add fruit flavor, aroma, and color to the punch.
Mineral water: Adds carbonation and dilutes the punch while keeping it lively.