Name: Fruit Punch
Ingredients: Juice of 8 lemons; Juice of 6 oranges; 6 bananas, sliced thin; 1 quart white grapes, cut fine and seeds removed; 2 quarts water; 1 pint sherry; Sugar, to taste

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

Prepare

Juice the lemons and oranges into a large bowl.
Slice the bananas thinly and add them to the bowl.
Remove the seeds from the grapes, cut them fine, and add to the mixture.

Assemble and serve

Pour in the water and sherry, then stir well.
Sweeten to taste and serve iced or frozen.

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).
Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,771 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Grape + sherrytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together229 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons: Provide acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the punch.
Oranges: Add sweetness and juice that gives the punch its body and aroma.
Bananas: Add body and a soft, creamy texture to the punch.
White grapes: Add natural sweetness and juiciness to the fruit mixture.
Sherry: Adds aroma and a warm, wine-based depth to the punch.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, banana, grape, sherry, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Pineapplefits better
Applefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, banana, grape, sherry, 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.