Name: To Keep Lemons Eor Lemonade
Ingredients: lemons; fine white 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 ↓

To Keep Lemons Eor Lemonade

Ingredients

lemons
fine white sugar

Directions

Prepare

Slice the lemons when perfectly fresh.

Pack and store

Pack the slices in glass jars with a thick layer of fine white sugar between each layer.
Seal the jars.
Store them in a cool place.

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

Lemons: Provide the main flavour and acidity, and their peel and pulp soften and mellow as they sit.
Fine white sugar: Draws moisture out of the lemons and forms a syrup, helping to preserve them and sweeten their flavour.

“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.