Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Effervescent Lemonade Powders
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the powders
Pound and mix together the sugar, carbonate of soda, and oil of lemon.
Divide the mixture into sixteen parts and wrap each in white paper.
Divide the tartaric acid into sixteen parts and wrap each in blue paper.
Serve
To serve, dissolve one of each kind in ½ glass of water, mix, and drink while effervescing.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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
- Carbonate of soda
- Reacts with the tartaric acid to release carbon dioxide, creating the effervescence.
- Tartaric acid
- Provides sourness and reacts with the carbonate of soda to produce fizz when dissolved.
- Loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the acid.
- Oil of lemon
- Gives the powder its concentrated lemon aroma and flavour.
The step that matters
Keep the two powders separate until serving. Carbonate of soda and tartaric acid react as soon as they meet in moisture. Wrapping each portion separately keeps the reaction from starting early, so the fizz is saved for when the powders are dissolved in water.
“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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