Name: Hot Lemonade
Ingredients: four pints of boiling water; a pound of lump sugar; a pint of boiling water; six lemons

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 ↓

Hot Lemonade

Ingredients

four pints of boiling water
a pound of lump sugar
a pint of boiling water
six lemons

Directions

Prepare

Rub six lemons with some of the sugar, peel them very thin, and strain the juice.

Make the lemonade

Put the juice, lemon peel, and sugar into a jug and pour over it four pints of boiling water.
Cover the jug well with a cloth to keep in the steam.
Drink hot.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

61Calories

0 gProtein

0 gFat

16 gCarbs

Counts 2 of 3 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 2 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Lemon	juice of 1 lemon (48ml)	12
Water	not in our table	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed. 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. See the original page.

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

Lemons: Provide the juice and peel that give the drink its sharp, aromatic flavour.
Lump sugar: Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Boiling water: Dissolves the sugar and extracts flavour from the lemon juice and peel.

“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.