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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a chilled beverage made with water, citrus juices, pineapple, fruit juice, sugar, sliced fruit, and maraschino cherries.

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 ↓

Fruit Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Combine 2 quarts of water with the juice of 4 lemons and 3 oranges.

  2. Add ½ pint of finely chopped pineapple and 1 quart of cherry or strawberry juice.

  3. Stir in 2 cups of sugar until dissolved.

  4. Add the thinly sliced lemon and orange to the mixture.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, pour the punch over a block of ice in a punch bowl.

  2. Top with 1 cup of Maraschino cherries.

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. Pineapple + cherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + cherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + cherrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the sharp acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Cherry or strawberry juice
Supplies most of the fruit flavour and colour, and adds sweetness and liquid.
Pineapple
Adds chopped fruit pieces, texture, and a tropical fruit flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, pineapple, cherry, sugar. 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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