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
Juice the lemons and peel the rind of one lemon very thinly, getting just the yellow part.
Cut the rind into pieces and combine it with the lemon juice and powdered sugar in a jug or jar with a cover.
Infuse and cool
Pour the freshly boiled water over the lemon and sugar mixture.
Cover the jug immediately and let it cool before serving.
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
- Lemon juice
- Provides the sour, acidic flavour that defines the drink.
- Lemon rind
- Adds aromatic oils from the peel, giving a stronger lemon fragrance and flavour.
- Powdered sugar
- Balances the acidity with sweetness and dissolves quickly in the hot water.
The step that matters
Covering the jug immediately after adding the water. Lemon rind oils are volatile and escape as steam, so covering the jug while the water is hot traps the aromatics and keeps the flavour from tasting flat.
“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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