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Welsh Nectar

A sweetened lemon drink made with raisins, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Welsh Nectar

Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Welsh Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the peel off the lemons very thin.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the lemon peels and let it cool.

Steep and finish

  1. Add the strained juice of the lemons, sugar, and finely chopped raisins.

  2. Let it stand for 4 to 5 days, stirring daily.

  3. Strain through a jelly bag and bottle for immediate use.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Raisins
Add fruity sweetness and body to the infusion as they break down during steeping.
Lemons
Supply acidity and aroma from the juice and peel oils.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the liquid during the standing period.

The step that matters

Let it stand for 4 to 5 days, stirring daily. Steeping is what draws flavour from the lemon peel and raisins into the water. Stirring daily keeps the solids evenly distributed so the infusion extracts uniformly rather than unevenly at the bottom.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar. 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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