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Drink

Milk Lemonade

A chilled drink of lemon peel, powdered sugar, white wine, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Milk Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the lemons very thin and squeeze the juice over the peel.

  2. Let the mixture sit overnight.

Make the lemonade

  1. In the morning, add the powdered sugar and white wine to the lemon peel mixture.

  2. Boil the fresh milk and add it to the mixture while hot.

  3. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag until perfectly clear.

Chill and serve

  1. Let it stand until completely cold before serving.

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.

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. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. White wine + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together929 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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 acidity and fragrant oils from the peel that flavor the lemonade.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the lemon and wine.
White wine
Adds acidity and a subtle fruity flavor to the lemonade.
Fresh milk
Its proteins curdle when hot and acidic, and the solids are strained out, leaving a clear liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk and straining until clear. The hot milk reacts with the acidic lemon and wine, curdling its proteins into solids. Straining through a jelly bag removes these curds, so the milk must be added hot and the straining done patiently to get a clear result.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, milk. 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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