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Royal Lemonade

A citrus lemonade made by steeping oranges and lemons, boiling sugar water, and combining with fresh citrus juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Royal Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Pare the oranges and lemons as thin as possible.

  2. Steep them in 1 quart of hot water for 4 hours.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 3 pints of water with 1¼ lbs of sugar and skim well.

  2. Combine the boiled sugar water with the steeped oranges and lemons.

Finish and serve

  1. Squeeze in the juice of 6 oranges and 12 lemons.

  2. Stir well and strain through a jelly bag.

  3. Chill the lemonade with ice.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 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

Sugar
Sweetens the lemonade and balances the sharp citrus acidity.
Lemons
Supply sour acidity and aromatic oil from the peel and juice.
Oranges
Add sweeter citrus flavour and aroma from the peel and juice.

The step that matters

Skim the boiled sugar water well. Boiling sugar water releases foam and impurities that rise to the surface. Skimming them away keeps the finished lemonade clear and free of off flavours.

“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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