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
Dissolve the citric acid in warm water and mix well.
Avoid using a brass kettle.
Finish and store
Once the mixture is completely cool, add the oil of lemon.
Bottle the syrup for storage.
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 sourness that gives the syrup its tart, bright flavor.
- Oil of lemon
- Supplies the concentrated lemon aroma and flavor.
The step that matters
Add the oil of lemon only after the mixture is completely cool. Lemon oil contains volatile aromatic compounds that evaporate readily when heated. Adding it to a cooled syrup helps keep the lemon aroma strong instead of letting it escape as steam.
“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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