Name: Plain Lemonade
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons 4X sugar; juice of 1 lemon; ⅓ cup shaved ice; water; thin slice of lemon for garnish

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 ↓

Plain Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Combine 2 tablespoons of sugar and the juice of 1 lemon in a glass.
Add ⅓ cup of shaved ice and fill the glass with water.
Shake well to mix the ingredients.
Pour into a serving glass and garnish with a thin slice of lemon.
Serve with straws.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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

4x sugar: Dissolves easily in cold liquid and provides sweetness to balance the lemon's sourness.
Lemon juice: Supplies the sour, bright flavour and aroma that define the lemonade.
Shaved ice: Chills the drink quickly and gradually dilutes it as the ice melts.

“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.