Name: Red or Black Raspberry Punch
Ingredients: 3 quarts raspberries; 3 tablespoons sugar; Juice of 6 lemons; 1 quart fresh raspberries

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Red or Black Raspberry Punch

Ingredients

3 quarts raspberries
3 tablespoons sugar
Juice of 6 lemons
1 quart fresh raspberries

Directions

Make the punch

Juice the raspberries and strain the juice.
Mix the raspberry juice with sugar and lemon juice.
Chill the mixture on ice for 20 minutes.

Serve

Add fresh raspberries before serving.
Serve with toothpicks.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 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

Raspberries: Provide the main flavor and the juice that forms the base of the punch.
Sugar: Sweetens the punch and balances the tartness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the raspberry flavor.

“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.