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Drink

Fruit Punch

A chilled fruit punch made with tea, sugar, citrus, pineapple, cherries, bananas, and Apollinaris 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 tea syrup

  1. Place the tea in a pitcher and pour in 1 quart of boiling water.

  2. Cover and let it steep for 20 minutes, then strain.

  3. Grate the yellow rind of half of the lemons and oranges.

  4. Add the gratings to the sugar.

  5. Combine the sugar with the tea in a saucepan and boil for 5 minutes.

  6. Strain into a stone jar and let it sit overnight.

Finish and serve

  1. The next morning, add the remaining ingredients except for the Apollinaris water.

  2. When ready to serve, pour into a punch bowl over a large piece of ice.

  3. Add the Apollinaris water.

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. Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ceylon tea
Provides tannins for a bold, slightly bitter background flavour that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, dissolved in the hot tea, helps carry the citrus aroma through the punch.
Lemons
Supply acidity and fragrant rind oil that brightens the whole punch.
Pineapple
Adds sweetness, fruit body and tropical aroma.
Bananas
Add body and creaminess to the punch.
Apollinaris water
Adds carbonation, giving a lively fizz when added at the end.

The step that matters

Add the Apollinaris water last, just before serving. Carbonation escapes quickly from warm or stirred liquid, so adding the sparkling water at the end over ice keeps the punch fizzy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, sugar, orange, pineapple, almond, vanilla, banana. 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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