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Lemon Cordial

A clear lemon liqueur made by boiling lemon slices in milk, then adding brandy, sugar, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Make the whey

  1. Cut the lemons into thin slices.

  2. Boil the lemon slices in the milk until the whey is very clear.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and bottle

  1. Add the brandy and sugar to the whey, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Let it stand to refine, then bottle it.

  3. Pare some of the yellow rind of the lemons very thin and add a little to each bottle.

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 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 acidity and citrus aroma that flavour the cordial.
Milk
Its proteins curdle when boiled with lemon, separating out whey that clears the liquid.
French brandy
Adds alcohol that preserves the cordial and carries its aroma.
Powdered loaf sugar
Sweetens the cordial and helps balance the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Boil the lemon slices in the milk until the whey is very clear. Boiling curdles the milk so the solids separate. Stopping too early leaves cloudy whey, while the sieve can only remove what has already separated.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, brandy, 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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