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 ↓
Lemon Squash
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Mix lemon juice and sugar in a jug.
Place the jug in a pan of hot water until the sugar dissolves, but do not let it boil.
Bottle and serve
Bottle the mixture. It will keep for months.
To serve, add water or soda water to a small quantity.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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 sharp acidity and fresh lemon flavour that define the squash.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the lemon's sourness, and helps preserve the concentrate.
The step that matters
Dissolve the sugar without boiling. Gentle heat dissolves the sugar fully without boiling the lemon juice. Boiling dulls the fresh lemon flavour and can make the syrup taste cooked.
“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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