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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a sweet pineapple and cherry beverage made with simple syrup and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the pineapple.

  2. In a saucepan, combine white sugar and water to make a simple syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup until it thickens.

  4. Sweeten the syrup to taste.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the chopped pineapple, Maraschino cherries, and syrup in a large bowl.

  2. Add the remaining water and stir well.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + syruptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Sweetens the punch and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that carries the fruit flavor.
Pineapple
Adds tart-sweet fruit flavor and juice that gives the punch body.
Maraschino cherries
Add sweetness, color, and a cherry flavor to the punch.

The step that matters

Boiling the simple syrup. Sugar must fully dissolve in the hot water to make a smooth syrup. Boiling until it thickens concentrates the syrup, so it blends evenly into the punch instead of leaving grainy sugar or a watery sweetness.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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