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Drink

Jelly Lemonade

A citrus drink made with orange and lemon rinds steeped in hot water, sugar syrup, and fresh juice, then strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Jelly Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Thinly pare the yellow rind from the oranges and lemons.

  2. Steep the rind in 1 quart of hot water for 4 hours.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1½ pounds of loaf sugar in 3 pints of water. Skim until clear.

Combine and bottle

  1. Combine the steeped mixture and the sugar syrup.

  2. Add the juice of 6 oranges and 12 lemons. Mix well.

  3. Strain through a jelly bag until clear.

  4. Keep the lemonade cool until ready to use.

  5. Pour into clean glass bottles. Cork tightly.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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 the main acidity and bright citrus flavour of the lemonade.
Oranges
Add sweet citrus juice and aromatic oil from the rind to the lemonade.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the lemonade and balances the sharp citrus acidity.

The step that matters

Strain through a jelly bag until clear. Straining removes rind particles, pulp and sediment so the lemonade stays clear and does not turn cloudy or gritty over time.

“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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