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Lemon Syrup

A sweetened lemon syrup made by boiling sugar, lemon rind, and water, then adding lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lemon Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Break up the six pounds of fine loaf-sugar into large pieces.

  2. Grate the yellow rind of the twelve large ripe lemons over the sugar, without cutting them.

  3. Put the sugar, lemon gratings, and two quarts of water into a preserving kettle and let it dissolve.

  4. Boil the mixture until it becomes quite thick, skimming off any scum that rises.

Finish and store

  1. When the syrup is quite cold, stir in the juice of all the lemons.

  2. Bottle the syrup and keep it in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Mix one third lemon syrup with two thirds ice water to serve.

By Eliza Leslie. 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the water and thickens into a syrup that sweetens the drink.
Lemons
Their rind adds aroma and their juice adds acidity to the syrup.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled down into a syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until quite thick. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar, so the syrup thickens and keeps well when bottled. Undercooked syrup stays thin and is more likely to spoil, while skimming removes scum that would otherwise cloud the syrup.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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