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Welch Punch

A chilled grape juice punch made with Welch's grape juice, water, lemon and orange juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Welch Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix Welch's grape juice, water, lemon juice, orange juice, and sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Serve very cold.

  4. If using a punch bowl, garnish with sliced fruits.

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. Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  3. Grape + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar 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

Welch's grape juice
Provides the main flavor and most of the sweetness and color of the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Orange juice
Adds fruity citrus aroma and extra flavor depth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the citrus juices.

The step that matters

Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Undissolved sugar sinks and leaves the punch unevenly sweet. Stirring until fully dissolved gives every glass the same balance of sweetness and acidity.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, 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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