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Drink

Improved Lemonade

A citrus drink made with orange and lemon juice, sugar, ice, pineapple, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Improved Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Juice the oranges and lemons into a large pitcher.

  2. Add sugar to taste and stir until dissolved.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix in the pounded ice and sliced pineapple.

  2. Pour in 2 quarts of water 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 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

Orange juice
Provides the main fresh citrus flavour and some acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sourness of the citrus juices.
Pounded ice
Chills the drink and dilutes it slightly as it melts.
Water
Dilutes the juices to a drinkable strength.

The step that matters

Stir the sugar until dissolved. Sugar dissolves much more readily in liquid than in cold juice when stirred well. Undissolved sugar stays gritty and settles at the bottom, so the sweetness will be uneven.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, 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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Egg 62Flaxseed 48Milk 35Pineapple 20Hot 16Irish Moss 13 See all 251 →

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