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 Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Pour enough lemon juice over the powdered sugar to dissolve it.
Boil the mixture until it reaches the consistency of thick syrup.
Shape and set
Drop the syrup onto plates.
Place the plates in a warm area to harden.
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
- Powdered sugar
- Provides the sweetness and forms the hard, glassy candy once boiled and cooled.
- Lemon juice
- Adds sharp acidity and helps dissolve the sugar before boiling.
The step that matters
Boil to thick syrup. Sugar hardens as its water evaporates and its concentration rises. Stop too early and the drops stay soft and sticky; boil too long and the sugar darkens and turns bitter.
“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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