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Lemonade with Eggs

A chilled lemonade made with lemon juice, sugar, water, eggs, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lemonade with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour 1 pint of cold water over ¾ pound of sugar and add the juice of 5 lemons.

  2. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs until light.

  3. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth and fold into the yolks.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the egg mixture with the lemon‑sugar water.

  2. Add 1½ cups of cracked ice, stir well, and serve.

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.

  1. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Eggs
Whites whipped to a stiff froth add lightness and a frothy texture to the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sharp acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides the sour, bright flavour that defines the lemonade.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped whites into the yolks. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or beating hard would deflate the froth, leaving the drink flat and less light in texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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