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Reception Punch

A fruit punch made with lemon, orange, pineapple, cherries, grape wine, sugar, water, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Reception Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Extract the juice from the lemons and oranges.

  2. Boil the sugar with 2 cups of water until dissolved.

  3. Add the grated peel and juices from the fruit to the sugar mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine with 1 gallon of water, the diced pineapple, white cherries, and Maraschino cherries.

  2. Serve over cracked ice and add fresh strawberry juice and whole berries if desired.

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. Pineapple + strawberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Grape + strawberrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the water to sweeten the punch and give it body.
Lemons
Provide acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Oranges
Add aromatic peel oils and juice for fragrance and extra fruity flavour.
Diced pineapple
Adds fruit pieces and tropical sweetness with a touch of acidity.
Sweet white grape wine
Adds fruity flavour and alcohol-based aroma and body to the punch.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully in the boiling water. Sugar must dissolve completely in hot water before the fruit juices and cold water are added. Undissolved sugar stays gritty and makes the punch unevenly sweet.

Swap the strawberry

The recipe marks strawberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pineapple, grape, wine, orange, sugar):

  1. Mangofits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pineapple, grape, wine, orange, 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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