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Drink

Vichy Punch

A sparkling punch made with orange and lemon juice, sugar, pistachios, cherries, candied mint, crushed ice, and Vichy water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Vichy Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the juice of 4 oranges and 2 lemons in a large bowl.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of loaf sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Mix in 50 pistachio nuts, 50 maraschino cherries, and 6 broken candied mint leaves.

  4. Just before serving, add 1 quart of crushed ice and 5 pint bottles of Vichy.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Sweetens the citrus juice so the punch tastes balanced rather than sharply acidic.
Orange and lemon juice
Provides the acidity and bright citrus flavor that defines the punch.
Vichy
Adds carbonation, giving the punch its lively, effervescent texture.

The step that matters

Adding the Vichy and ice just before serving. Carbonation escapes quickly from sparkling water once it is poured or stirred repeatedly, so adding the Vichy last keeps the punch fizzy when served.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, sugar, pistachio, mint):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar, pistachio, mint. 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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