Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓
Portable Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Roll the lemons on the table to make them easier to squeeze.
Press the juice into a bowl or tumbler, avoiding tin, and strain out the seeds.
Remove all pulp from the lemon peels.
Make the syrup
Boil the pulp in 1 pint of water for a few minutes to remove the acid, then strain.
Combine the strained water with the lemon juice and add 1 pound of sugar.
Boil the mixture for 10 minutes, then bottle it.
Serve
To serve, mix 1 to 2 teaspoons of syrup with a glass of water.
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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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Lemons
- Provide the juice and acidity that give the drink its sharp flavor.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the drink and balances the sourness of the lemon juice.
- Water
- Dilutes the juice and sugar into a drinkable liquid and carries the pulp flavor into the syrup.
The step that matters
Boil the pulp in water to remove the acid. Boiling the pulp in water helps draw out remaining acid from the peel and pulp, which would otherwise make the syrup harsher. Straining afterward keeps the solids out of the final syrup.
“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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