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Drink

Fruit Punch

A chilled beverage made from pineapple, citrus, fruit juice, tea, and fresh fruit, served with ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Grate the pineapple after removing the shell and eyes.

  2. Add 1 quart of water and cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain through cheesecloth, pressing out all the juice.

  4. Add another quart of water and 1 quart of sugar, then boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Stir in 1 cup of freshly made tea.

Blend and serve

  1. When cold, add the juice of 6 oranges, 6 lemons, and 1 pint of strawberry or grape juice.

  2. Finally, mix in 5 quarts of cold water.

  3. Adjust sweetness with more sugar or syrup to taste.

  4. Add strawberries, mint leaves, or banana slices with ice before 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pineapple + strawberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Strawberry + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together421 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Supplies juice and fruity flavour that forms the punch's base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when boiled, helps make a syrup that balances the acidity.
Oranges
Add acidity and citrus aroma to the punch.
Lemons
Add sharp acidity that brightens the sweetness.
Strawberry or grape juice
Adds colour and fruity flavour to the punch.

The step that matters

Adjust sweetness with more sugar or syrup to taste. Sugar's sweetness is partly offset by acidity, and dilution with cold water and ice weakens both, so the punch is best tasted and sweetened after the final dilution and chilling.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, tea, orange, lemon, strawberry, 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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