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Lemonade, Effervescing

A sparkling lemonade made with sugar syrup, lemon juice, soda, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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, Effervescing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar in lemon juice until dissolved.

  2. Pour the syrup into bottles and let it cool.

Serve

  1. When ready to use, mix 1 tablespoon of syrup with a tumbler of cold water.

  2. Stir in 20 grains of carbonate of soda and drink while effervescing.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the juice to make a sweet, thick syrup that balances the sourness.
Lemon juice
Provides the acidity and flavor, and cooks with the sugar into the syrup base.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acidic lemon syrup to release carbon dioxide, creating the fizz.

The step that matters

Stir in the carbonate of soda and drink right away. Carbonate of soda reacts with the acid in the lemonade to release carbon dioxide bubbles. The fizz fades as the gas escapes, so it should be stirred in just before drinking.

“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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