Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓
Cherry Water
Ingredients
Directions
Pound the cherries into a pulp, removing stones and kernels.
Add the lemon juice, boiling water, and sugar.
Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.
Chill the strained liquid before serving.
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 + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon and sugar 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
- Ripe red cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the drink.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavour and balances sweetness.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to taste, balancing the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
The step that matters
Strain through a fine sieve. Pounding breaks the fruit into a pulp with small fragments that make the liquid cloudy and gritty. A fine sieve removes these particles, giving a smoother, clearer drink, and it also catches any stone or kernel fragments that were missed.
“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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