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Dessert

Lemon Flavoring

A syrup made by steeping sliced lemons in sugar and water, then simmering and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Flavoring

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the lemons thinly.

  2. In an earthen jar, layer sugar and lemons.

  3. Let them sit overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour enough water over them to make a syrup.

  2. Place the jar in a kettle of water and simmer without boiling.

  3. Strain and bottle the syrup.

Use

  1. Use a few spoonfuls in water to make lemonade.

  2. The strained lemons can be used in preserves for flavoring.

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 + 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 flavor and acidity, and their juice dissolves into the syrup.
White sugar
Draws juice from the lemons and preserves the syrup, giving it sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Boiling can make the syrup bitter and cloudy, and it can drive off the bright lemon aroma. Gentle heat in a water bath dissolves the sugar while keeping the flavor fresh.

“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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