Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓
A Caramel
Ingredients
Directions
Boil sugar until it reaches the crack stage, where it breaks with a noise like glass.
Add 5-6 drops of lemon juice to prevent graining.
Remove from heat and place the bottom of the pan in cold water to stop burning.
Monitor closely to achieve the desired caramel color.
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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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon 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
- Sugar
- Melts and caramelizes into the brown colour and flavour of the caramel.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that helps prevent sugar from forming grainy crystals.
The step that matters
Monitor closely to achieve the desired caramel color. Sugar darkens quickly near the end of cooking, and a few seconds too long can turn it bitter and burnt. Removing the pan from heat and cooling its base in cold water halts the cooking so the colour stops at the desired point.
“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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