Skip to main content
Drink

Milk, Lemonade

A chilled drink made by steeping lemon rind, sweetening with sugar, adding sherry or wine, and mixing with heated milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sherry and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,479 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Milk, Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Steep the thin yellow rind of the lemons in their juice for 12 hours.

  2. Strain the juice through muslin to remove pulp and seeds.

  3. Sweeten the juice with 2 pounds of sugar.

Make the lemonade

  1. Add the bottle of sherry or white wine and 2 to 3 quarts of heated milk.

  2. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag until clear.

  3. Serve cold for a refreshing drink.

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. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from the juice and the steeped yellow rind.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Sherry or white wine
Adds alcohol and flavour that complements the lemon and sugar.
Milk
Adds body and creaminess, and curdling with the acidic juice is what the clearing strain removes.

The step that matters

Straining through a jelly bag until clear. Adding acidic juice, wine and warm milk causes the milk proteins to curdle. Straining slowly through a fine jelly bag separates the curds from the liquid, so the drink clears instead of staying cloudy or gritty.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sherry, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, milk. 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes