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Lemon Syrup

A sweet lemon syrup made by boiling sugar, water, citric acid, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,155 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemon Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the loaf sugar and water in a pot and boil for ¼ hour.

  2. Transfer the hot syrup to a basin and let it cool to room temperature.

  3. Beat the citric acid into a fine powder and mix it with the lemon essence.

  4. Add the citric acid‑lemon mixture to the cooled syrup and stir well.

  5. Bottle the finished syrup for later use.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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.

  1. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Syrup + horseradishtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar (in the method)
Dissolves into the water to form a syrup, providing sweetness and body.
Citric acid (in the method)
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Essence of lemon
Adds concentrated lemon aroma and flavour to the syrup.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, lemon):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, lemon. 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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