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Drink

Fruit Punch

A refreshing beverage made with citrus juice, pineapple, tea, and ginger ale, sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 punch base

  1. Press the juice out of the lemons and oranges, and place the rinds in a vessel with the tea.

  2. Pour the hot water over the rinds and tea, and let it stand for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and add it to the juice of the fruit, sweetening to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the pineapple into small pieces and add it to the mixture.

  2. Once everything is cool, add a large bottle of ginger ale.

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 + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Tea + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tea
Steeped in the hot water to give the punch its tannin-driven, slightly bitter depth.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the punch.
Oranges
Add sweetness and citrus aroma, with acidity that balances the sugar.
Pineapple
Adds fruit pieces, sweetness and a tropical flavor to the punch.
Ginger ale
Adds carbonation and light sweetness, making the punch lively and fizzy.

The step that matters

Adding the ginger ale when everything is cool. Carbonation escapes faster from warm liquid, so adding ginger ale after the mixture has cooled keeps the punch fizzy rather than flat.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, tea, ginger, 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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