Skip to main content
Drink

Fruit Cocktail

A chilled beverage of lemon, orange, and pineapple juices mixed with water and ginger ale, sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine lemon juice, orange juice, pineapple juice, and water in a large pitcher.

  2. Add sugar to taste and stir until dissolved.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, pour in the ginger ale.

  2. Serve chilled.

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 + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Pineapple + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together559 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the juices.
Orange juice
Provides fruity sweetness and body to the punch.
Pineapple juice
Contributes sweetness and a tropical fruit flavor.
Ginger ale
Adds carbonation and a mild spiced sweetness that lifts the drink.

The step that matters

Pour in the ginger ale just before serving. Carbonation escapes from liquids over time, so adding ginger ale early leaves the punch flat. Adding it last keeps the drink fizzy.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Blackberryfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

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

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes