Name: Plain Lemonade
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons sugar; juice of 1 lemon; ½ cup shaved ice; water; thin slice of lemon

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

Make the lemonade

In a glass, combine sugar and lemon juice.
Add shaved ice and fill the glass with water.
Shake well to mix.

Serve

Pour into a serving glass.
Garnish with a thin slice of lemon and 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

Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the sourness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice: Provides the sour, acidic flavour that defines the drink.
Shaved ice: Chills the drink quickly and gradually melts to add water and dilute it.

“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.