Name: Artificial Lemon Juice
Ingredients: 9 drachms and 12 grains of crystallized citric acid (about 1 tablespoon); 1 pint of water (2 cups); 1 drop of essence of lemon; 1 teaspoon of spirits

Why it works: Lemon and spirit work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 256 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Artificial Lemon Juice

Ingredients

9 drachms and 12 grains of crystallized citric acid (about 1 tablespoon)
1 pint of water (2 cups)
1 drop of essence of lemon
1 teaspoon of spirits

Directions

Make the substitute

Dissolve the citric acid in the water.
Add the drop of essence of lemon and the teaspoon of spirits, then stir well to combine.

Use

Use as a substitute for lemon juice in beverages.

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.

Lemon + spirittop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together256 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Citric acid: Provides the sour, acidic taste that lemon juice normally supplies.
Essence of lemon: Adds a concentrated lemon aroma to the liquid.

“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.