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Drink

Apple Lemonade

A cold beverage made from apples, raisins, spices, citrus rinds, and juice, served over shaved ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Apple Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash, quarter, and core the apples.

  2. Put the apples into a kettle with raisins, bay leaves, and cinnamon.

  3. Add 2 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

Make the lemonade

  1. Add 2 more quarts of cold water with dissolved sugar and grated rinds.

  2. Simmer slowly for 30 minutes, then strain.

  3. When cool, add the lemon and orange juice.

  4. Set on ice until very cold.

Serve

  1. Serve in sherbet cups with shaved 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main fruit flavor and body as they soften and release their juices while simmering.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon and orange juice
Add acidity and bright citrus flavor to the finished drink.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a mellow fruity flavor as they simmer in the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 30 minutes, then strain. Gentle simmering extracts flavor from the apples, raisins and spices without breaking them down into cloudiness. Straining afterward removes solids so the lemonade stays clear.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, cinnamon, sugar, lemon, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, cinnamon, sugar, lemon, orange. 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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