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 ↓
Lemonade {Ireland}
Ingredients
Directions
Make the lemonade
Combine the fresh lemon juice and sugar in a pitcher.
Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved.
Add the water and mix well.
Serve
Serve over ice and garnish with lemon slices.
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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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Dissolves into the juice to sweeten it and balance the lemon's sourness.
- Lemon juice
- Provides the sour acidity and bright citrus aroma that define the drink.
The step that matters
Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved. Undissolved sugar sinks and leaves the bottom of the pitcher sweet and gritty while the top tastes sour. Stirring the sugar into the concentrated juice before adding water helps it dissolve completely, so every glass tastes evenly sweetened.
“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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