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Drink

Peptonised Milk Lemonade

A chilled drink made with peptonised milk, lemon juice, ice, sugar, and optional mineral water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Peptonised Milk Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fill a goblet one-third full with cracked ice.

  2. Squeeze the juice of a lemon over the ice.

  3. Dissolve sugar to taste in the lemon juice.

  4. If using, pour mineral water over the ice and lemon juice.

  5. Fill the glass with peptonised milk and stir well.

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the drink its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the lemon's sourness.
Peptonised milk
Its milk proteins are partly broken down, so it stays smooth and resists curdling in the acidic lemon.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and stirring well. Lemon juice is acidic and can curdle ordinary milk. Peptonised milk has its proteins partly broken down, so it resists curdling, but thorough stirring still blends it evenly into the drink.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk. 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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