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Punch Appetizer

A fruit punch made with cherry juice, lemon, water, sugar, bananas, and marshmallows.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 187 recipes. Both carry n-butyl acetate, which smells pear, banana. The science ↓

Punch Appetizer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Combine cherry juice, water, and lemon juice in a large bowl.

  2. Add sugar to taste and stir until dissolved.

  3. Cut marshmallows into 4 or 6 pieces and dice the bananas.

  4. Add marshmallows and bananas to the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve in small glasses before dinner, providing a straw and spoon for each serving.

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. Cherry + bananatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together187 recipes

    Shared aroma: n-butyl acetate (pear, banana).

  2. Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + bananatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Cherry juice
Provides the main liquid and fruity flavour base of the punch.
Marshmallows
Soften in the liquid and add sweetness and a soft, chewy texture.
Bananas
Add body, mild sweetness, and soft pieces of fruit to the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavours.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cherry, sugar, banana. 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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