Skip to main content
Drink

Fine Lemonade

A citrus beverage made with lemon juice, sugar, water, green tea, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and green tea work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 104 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fine Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemon base

  1. Roll the whole lemon on a table to make it juicier.

  2. Cut it in half and squeeze over the sugar in a bowl.

  3. Pour the cold water over the mixture and stir until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Remove any seeds.

Make the tea infusion

  1. Roll the three large lemons on the table.

  2. Pare them thinly and cut out the pulp, discarding seeds and white rind.

  3. Put the yellow rind and pulp into a pot with 1 pint of boiling water.

  4. Boil for 2-3 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat, add the green tea, and let it infuse for 5 minutes.

  6. Strain through a linen cloth.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir in ¾ pound of loaf sugar and 1 pint of brandy.

  2. Heat until just about to boil, then remove from heat.

  3. Pour the mixture into a china bowl or pitcher.

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. Lemon + green teatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

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

  2. Green tea + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (sweet).

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

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

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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
Their juice and rind supply the sharp, aromatic flavour of the lemonade.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the drink and dissolves into the juice to balance its acidity.
Raw green tea
Adds bitter, astringent notes and a light tannin character to the infusion.
Brandy
Adds alcohol and warmth, carrying aroma and helping keep the drink stable.

The step that matters

Heating before the brandy goes in. Heating the mixture just to the boil, then stopping, keeps the flavour bright and avoids boiling off the liquor while the sugar is dissolved.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, green tea, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, green tea, brandy. 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