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Drink

Tea Punch

A chilled tea punch with sugar syrup, lemon juice, orange juice, fruit slices, preserved cherries, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Tea Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the brewed tea.

  2. Mix in the sugar syrup, lemon juice, and orange juice.

  3. Add the ice water, sliced lemon, sliced orange, and preserved cherries.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a punch bowl with a block of ice.

  2. Serve in glasses with a slice of fruit and a cherry in each.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

  4. Tea + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

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

  5. 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

Brewed tea
Provides the main body and flavor base of the punch.
Sugar syrup
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor of the punch.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity, rounding out the citrus flavor.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Peachfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, sugar, syrup, lemon. 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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