Name: Lemon Syrup
Ingredients: 7 pounds loaf sugar; 3 quarts water; 4 ounces citric acid; 1 teaspoon oil of lemon; 3 pounds loaf sugar; ¼ pound best cloves, slightly bruised

Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lemon Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Dissolve 3 pounds of loaf sugar in 3 quarts of water.
Add 4 ounces of citric acid and 1 teaspoon of oil of lemon.
In a separate container, combine ¼ pound of bruised cloves with the remaining sugar.

Bottle

Bottle the mixture well and seal.

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.

Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together17,182 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 body, thickening the liquid into a syrup.
Citric acid: Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup.
Oil of lemon: Supplies a concentrated lemon aroma and flavor.
Cloves: Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the syrup.