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Drink

Strawberry Water

A chilled beverage made from crushed strawberries, powdered sugar, lemon juice, and cold water.

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

Strawberry Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the strawberry juice

  1. Crush the strawberries with a wooden spoon.

  2. Mix in the powdered sugar and ½ pint of cold water.

  3. Pour the mixture into a fine sieve and rub through to filter until clear.

Finish and chill

  1. Add the strained juice of one lemon and 1½ pints of cold water.

  2. Mix thoroughly and chill in the ice chest until ready to serve.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Strawberries
Provides the main fruit flavour and the natural pink colour of the drink.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the drink and dissolves easily in cold liquid.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through the sieve. Pressing the pulp through a fine sieve separates the juice from solids so the drink stays clear. Pushing too hard forces fine pulp through, which makes the water cloudy.

“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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