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 Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Squeeze the juice of the lemons into a bowl.
Pound and sift the sugar through a fine sieve until very fine.
Make the mixture
Mix the sugar with the lemon juice until thick and difficult to stir.
Transfer the mixture to a copper saucepan and stir over medium heat for 5 minutes.
Shape and cool
Remove from heat and drop spoonfuls onto parchment paper using a knife.
Let them cool until they can be removed from the paper.
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
- Adds sharp acidity and bright lemon flavour that balances the sugar.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and, once cooked and cooled, helps the drops set firm.
The step that matters
Stirring over medium heat. Sugar cooked with acid can scorch or turn grainy if heated unevenly or too long, and the drops only set firm once the mixture has cooled.
“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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