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 Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil the sugar and water together for 15 minutes.
Pour the mixture into a basin and let it cool.
Flavour and bottle
Powder the citric acid and mix it with the essence of lemon.
Add the citric acid mixture to the cooled syrup and mix well.
Bottle the syrup for use.
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
- Loaf sugar
- Provides sweetness and the body of the syrup.
- Citric acid
- Adds sharp, tangy acidity that balances the sweetness.
- Essence of lemon
- Supplies the lemon aroma and flavour.
The step that matters
Add the citric acid mixture to the cooled syrup. Lemon essence contains volatile aromatic compounds that evaporate when heated, so adding it to hot syrup would weaken the lemon aroma. Letting the syrup cool first keeps the flavour bright.
“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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