Name: Mock Strawberry Blend
Ingredients: Juice of 1 lemon; Juice of 1 orange; 1 pint cooked cranberries (strained); 1 quart water (for cooking cranberries); 1 pint water; 3 tablespoons sugar

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 ↓

Mock Strawberry Blend

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cranberry juice

Cook cranberries in 1 quart of water until soft, then strain the juice.

Combine and serve

In a bowl, combine the lemon juice, orange juice, cranberry juice, 1 pint of water, and sugar.
Heat the mixture until warm, then strain again.
Chill the blend on ice before serving.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar 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

Cranberries: Provide the main fruit flavour and tartness, and the juice that forms the drink's base.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the tart cranberry and citrus juices.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity and brightness to the drink.
Orange juice: Adds sweetness, citrus aroma and body to the drink.

“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.