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Effervescing Lemonade

A chilled lemon drink mixed with sugar and soda for effervescence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Effervescing Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemonade

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and strain it.

  2. Add the lemon juice to the cold water.

  3. Sweeten the mixture with the sugar and mix well.

Add the soda and serve

  1. Add the carbonate of soda, stir well, and drink while effervescing.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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
Supplies the sour acidity and the acid that reacts with the soda to make fizz.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the lemon's acid to release carbon dioxide, creating the sparkling effervescence.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Add the carbonate of soda and drink immediately. The fizz comes from carbon dioxide released when the soda meets the lemon acid. That gas escapes quickly from the liquid, so the lemonade loses its sparkle if it is left to stand.

“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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