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Drink

Brandy Lemonade

A chilled drink made with brandy, lemon juice, rind, sugar, and boiling water.

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

Brandy Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine brandy, lemon juice, lemon rind, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and stir until sugar dissolves.

Set

  1. Strain the mixture into molds.

  2. Chill until set.

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).

  2. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Brandy
Forms the main liquid and gives the drink its spirited, warming flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the brandy.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils that give a fresher, more citrusy scent and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, once dissolved, adds body to the liquid.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully in the boiling water. Sugar dissolves much more readily in hot liquid. Undissolved grains left in the mixture can stay gritty in the finished set mold.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, 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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