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Strawberry Punch

A chilled fruit punch made with strawberries, sugar, lemon and orange juice, pineapple, dark red berries, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Strawberry Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald 4 quarts of strawberries, then press out the juice and strain it.

  2. Add 1 lb of sugar for every quart of berries, along with the juice of 2 lemons, juice of 4 oranges, and 1 grated pineapple.

  3. Finally, add 1 quart of fresh, firm dark red berries.

  4. Just before serving, pour the mixture over 10 tablespoons of cracked ice.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavour and colour; pressing and straining yields the juice base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus and berries.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and balances sweetness.
Oranges
Add sweetness and citrus aroma along with extra acidity.
Pineapple
Adds tropical sweetness and acidity to the punch.

The step that matters

Pour over the cracked ice just before serving. Ice melts and dilutes the punch as it sits, so adding it late keeps the flavour concentrated and the drink cold without becoming watery.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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