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 ↓
Lemon Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the syrup
Place the thin rind of 5 lemons in a tub.
Boil 4 quarts of water with 4 pounds of sugar for 30 minutes to make a syrup.
Allow the syrup to cool, then add the strained juice of 10 lemons.
Ferment
Cover the mixture with a toast topped with yeast and let it stand for 1-2 days until fermentation begins.
Remove the lemon rind and transfer the liquid into a cask, keeping it filled to the top until fermentation ceases.
Age and bottle
Seal the cask tightly and let it age for 3 months before bottling.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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
- Provides the sugar that yeast converts to alcohol during fermentation, and sweetness in the finished wine.
- Yeast
- Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
- Lemons
- Supply the juice for acidity and aroma, and the rind for flavour.
- Water
- Forms the liquid base in which the sugar dissolves and the yeast ferments.
The step that matters
Keeping the cask topped up. Keeping the cask full limits contact with air, so the wine is less likely to oxidise or spoil by acetic bacteria while fermentation finishes.
“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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