Name: Grape Punch
Ingredients: 1 quart water; 1 pint sugar; 1 pint grape juice; 1 pint orange juice; juice of 3 lemons; cold water to dilute

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 ↓

Grape Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Boil 1 quart of water with 1 pint of sugar for 10 minutes to make a syrup.
Add 1 pint of grape juice, 1 pint of orange juice, and the juice of 3 lemons.
Chill the mixture and then add cold water to dilute to your taste.
Serve chilled.

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).
Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,771 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Grape + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,412 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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: Dissolves into the boiled water to make a syrup that sweetens the punch.
Grape juice: Provides the main fruit flavor and color of the punch.
Orange juice: Adds fruity sweetness and body to the punch.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup and juices.