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Lemon Nectar

A sweetened citrus infusion made with lemons, oranges, raisins, spices, and rock candy, steeped for a week.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Lemon Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the lemons and oranges.

  2. Chop the raisins.

  3. Combine the lemons, oranges, raisins, cinnamon, cloves, sassafras, and rock candy in a jar.

  4. Pour the boiling water over the mixture.

Steep and bottle

  1. Cover with cheesecloth and let stand in a cool place for one week, stirring daily.

  2. Strain through several layers of cheesecloth and bottle for use.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the sharp acidity and citrus aroma that flavour the syrup.
Oranges
Add sweet citrus flavour and aroma to the infused liquid.
Rock candy
Sweetens the syrup as it dissolves in the hot water.
Raisins
Contribute body and a mellow sweetness to the steeped liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour during steeping.

The step that matters

Steep in a cool place, stirring daily. Steeping for the full week lets the fruit, spices and sugar slowly release their flavour into the water. Keeping it cool slows fermentation and spoilage, and stirring daily keeps the solids in contact with the liquid so the infusion extracts evenly.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, orange, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, cinnamon, clove. 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.

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