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Drink

Flax Seed Lemonade

A chilled beverage made by steeping flax seeds in boiling water, then adding lemon juice and sweetening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Flax Seed Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemonade

  1. Pour boiling water over the flax seed in a covered pitcher.

  2. Add the lemon juice, leaving out the peel.

  3. Sweeten to taste.

Steep and serve

  1. Steep for 3 hours.

  2. If too thick, add cold water with lemon juice and sugar before serving.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Whole flax seed
Soaked in hot water, it releases soluble gums that thicken the liquid and give it body.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sourness of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Covering the pitcher while the flax steeps. Keeping the hot flax covered holds in heat and moisture, which helps the seed release its gums slowly and evenly. Thickness depends on this release, so the drink may end up too thin or too thick if the steep is disturbed.

“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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