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 ↓
Lemon Powder
Ingredients
Directions
Make the powder
Combine the crushed loaf sugar and lemon essence in a bowl.
Allow the mixture to dry completely.
Add the carbonate of soda and citric acid to the dry sugar mixture. Mix well and transfer to a dry, wide-mouthed bottle.
Store
Seal the bottle tightly and store in a cool, dry place.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Crushed loaf sugar
- Provides the sweet bulk of the powder and carries the lemon flavour.
- Carbonate of soda
- Reacts with the citric acid when moistened, releasing carbon dioxide for fizzing.
- Citric acid
- Supplies sourness and reacts with the carbonate of soda to create the fizz.
The step that matters
Allow the mixture to dry completely. Any leftover moisture lets the carbonate of soda and citric acid react early in the bottle, so the powder loses its fizz and may clump. The sugar must be fully dry before the acids and carbonate are added.
“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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