Name: Tea Punch
Ingredients: 1 quart of tea; 1 cup sugar syrup; ½ cup lemon juice; ¼ cup orange juice; 1 quart ice water; 1 lemon, sliced; 1 orange, sliced; ½ cup preserved cherries; 1 block of ice

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

Make the punch

Chill the tea, sugar syrup, lemon juice, and orange juice.
Add the ice water to the mixture.
Slice the lemon and orange, and add them along with the preserved cherries.
Pour the punch into a bowl with a block of ice.

Serve

Serve in glasses, adding a slice of fruit and a cherry to 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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together610 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Tea + orangetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together333 recipes

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

Tea: Provides the main body and astringent backbone of the punch.
Sugar syrup: Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Orange juice: Adds fruity sweetness and acidity, rounding out the citrus flavour.
Preserved cherries: Contributes concentrated fruit flavour and sweetness to the punch.