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Drink

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch is a chilled beverage made with lemon, orange, strawberry, pineapple, raspberry, banana, and sugar.

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 the lemon juice, orange juice, crushed strawberries, water, shredded pineapple, raspberry juice, banana slices, and grated lemon rind in a large bowl.

  2. Add sugar to taste and mix well.

Chill and serve

  1. Pack the mixture in ice until it begins to congeal.

  2. Serve with a slice of orange in each cup.

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 + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + raspberrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Raspberry + bananatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Add fruity flavor and color, and body from their crushed pulp.
Pineapple
Adds tropical fruit flavor and a little texture from the shredded pieces.
Banana
Adds body and a soft, mellow sweetness to the punch.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the citrus juices.

The step that matters

Packing the mixture in ice until it begins to congeal. Chilling slows the mixture as it cools, so it thickens slightly without freezing solid. Stop once it starts to set, because ice that is too cold or left too long will dilute the punch as it melts and dull the fruit flavor.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, pineapple, raspberry, banana, 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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