Name: Iceland Moss Lemonade
Ingredients: 1 handful Iceland Moss; 2 quarts boiling water; 2 lemons; 4 tablespoons sugar; additional cold water (if needed)

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 ↓

Iceland Moss Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the Iceland moss in two changes of water.
Peel and slice the lemons, discarding the peel.
Mash the sliced lemons with the sugar.
Mix the mashed lemons with the moss in a large container.

Make the lemonade

Pour the boiling water over the mixture and let it cool.
If the mixture is too thick, add cold water to adjust the consistency.
Sweeten to taste and serve ice-cold.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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

Iceland moss: Provides the thickening and gel-like body that gives the drink its texture.
Lemons: Supply the acidity and bright flavour that balance the sweetness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps draw flavour out of the mashed lemons.

“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.