Name: Acidulated Lemonade
Ingredients: 3 pints boiling water; 4 ounces fresh lemon juice; ½ ounce thinly cut lemon peel; 4 ounces finely powdered sugar

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 ↓

Acidulated Lemonade

Ingredients

3 pints boiling water
4 ounces fresh lemon juice
½ ounce thinly cut lemon peel
4 ounces finely powdered sugar

Directions

Make the lemonade

Add the lemon juice and lemon peel to the boiling water.
Stir in the powdered sugar until dissolved.
Let the mixture cool, then strain it through a jelly bag.

Bottle

If not using immediately, bottle and cork it carefully.

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.

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

Lemon juice: Provides the sharp acidity that defines the lemonade's flavor.
Powdered sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the acidity and dissolves readily in the hot liquid.
Lemon peel: Contributes aromatic lemon oils that add fragrance and flavor to the drink.

“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.