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Drink

Plum Punch

A chilled fruit punch made with ripe plums, citrus juices, pineapple, sugar, carbonated water, claret, banana, and candied plums.

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 ↓

Plum Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Seed and mash the plums in a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon juice, orange juice, pineapple slices, and sugar.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 1 hour, then strain it.

Finish the punch

  1. Heat the strained mixture and add the carbonated water and Claret.

  2. Stir in the sliced banana and candied plums.

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. Plum + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol (fusel, malty).

  4. Plum + bananatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Very ripe plums
Provide the main fruit flavor, and their pulp gives body to the punch.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Claret
Adds wine flavor and body to the punch.
Carbonated water
Adds effervescence, making the punch lighter and livelier.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand, then strain it. Standing lets the fruit, citrus and sugar mingle and draw out flavor, while straining removes pulp and seeds so the punch stays clear and smooth. Rushing this leaves the drink gritty and less flavorful.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, orange, pineapple, 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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