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 ↓
Lemon or Orange Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Combine 1.5 pounds of white sugar with 1 pint of lemon or orange juice in a pot.
Add some peel and boil for 10 minutes.
Strain the mixture and pour it into a corked bottle.
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
- White sugar
- Provides sweetness and body, thickening the juice into a syrup.
- Lemon or orange juice
- Supplies the main acidity and citrus flavor.
- Lemon or orange peel
- Adds aroma from the fragrant oils in the peel.
The step that matters
Boiling for 10 minutes. Boiling dissolves the sugar fully and concentrates the syrup. Boiling too long over-thickens it as water evaporates, so a timed boil keeps the consistency right.
“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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