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Drink

Imperial Drink

A chilled lemon drink sweetened with honey and stabilized with cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,707 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Imperial Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemonade

  1. In a pitcher, combine the juice of 1 lemon, cream of tartar, and honey.

  2. Pour in 1 pint of boiling water and stir until the honey dissolves.

  3. Cover the mixture and let it cool.

Chill and serve

  1. Serve chilled, adding more honey if a sweeter taste is preferred.

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. Lemon + honeytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Cream + honeytop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Lemon juice
Provides sourness and bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Adds a tangy, acidic note that sharpens the flavor.
Honey
Provides the sweetness and a mild floral flavor.

The step that matters

Stir until the honey dissolves. Honey is thick and dense, so it dissolves most fully in hot water with steady stirring. Undissolved honey sinks to the bottom, leaving the drink unevenly sweet and grainy near the base.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, honey):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, honey. 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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