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 ↓
Good Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel the rind of one lemon very thinly, getting just the yellow part.
Cut the rind into pieces and place it in a jug or jar.
Make the lemonade
Juice the three lemons and add the juice to the jug with the rind and powdered sugar.
Pour the freshly boiled water over the lemon mixture, cover immediately, and let it cool.
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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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Lemons
- Provide the juice and aromatic oils from the rind that give lemonade its sharp, fragrant flavour.
- Powdered sugar
- Adds sweetness to balance the lemon's acidity and dissolves easily in the hot water.
- Freshly boiled water
- Dissolves the sugar and extracts flavour from the rind while the mixture cools.
The step that matters
Covering the jug immediately after adding the water. Lemon rind contains fragrant oils that are volatile, so covering the hot liquid traps them and keeps the aroma in the drink rather than letting it escape as steam.
“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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