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Drink

Italian Lemonade

A chilled beverage made from lemon juice, sugar, boiling water, white wine, boiling milk, and shaved ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Italian Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Thinly peel the lemons and press out the juice.

  2. Pour the juice over the lemon peels and let it sit for about 12 hours.

Make the lemonade

  1. Add the sugar and boiling water to the mixture.

  2. Stir in the white wine and then the boiling milk.

  3. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth or a jelly bag.

  4. Cool the lemonade and serve in tumblers with shaved ice at the bottom.

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 + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  3. White wine + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together929 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Lemons
Provide the juice and peel that give the lemonade its acidity and aroma.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the lemonade.
Milk
Its proteins curdle with the acid, and straining removes the solids, leaving a clearer, softer drink.

The step that matters

Straining the mixture. Straining through cheesecloth or a jelly bag removes the curdled milk solids and lemon peel, so the lemonade comes out clear and smooth rather than gritty.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, milk. 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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