Name: Lemonade Syrup
Ingredients: 4 cups water; 2 cups sugar; 6 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 ↓

Lemonade Syrup

Ingredients

4 cups water
2 cups sugar
6 lemons

Directions

Prepare

Combine 4 cups water and juice of 6 lemons.
Add 2 cups sugar.
If rinds are good, wash and drop them into boiling water.

Make the syrup

Let stand fifteen minutes.
Boil all of the above into a syrup.

Bottle

Put hot syrup into sterilized bottles, to be used for tea, lemonade and all drinks when this acid flavor is needed.

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 Mary Elizabeth Lyles Wilson (1860–1924). 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: Juice supplies the sour acidity and the rinds add aromatic citrus oils.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the lemon's sharp acidity and gives the syrup body.

“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.