Why it works: Lemon and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,235 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Lemon Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Filter the lemon juice through blotting paper.
Make the syrup
Boil the syrup until it reaches a small crack stage.
Add the filtered lemon juice to the boiling syrup.
Let it boil until it reaches a pearl stage.
Skim off any foam, remove from heat, and let it cool.
Bottle
Bottle the syrup.
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 + syruptop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,235 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the syrup.
- Syrup
- Provides the sweet base that the lemon juice is added to and cooked down.
The step that matters
Let it boil until it reaches a pearl stage.. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and its concentration rises, so stopping at the wrong stage leaves it too thin or too thick. Watching the stage matters more than the clock.
“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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