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 ↓
Portable Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Strain the juice from the lemons.
Mix the lemon juice with the sugar until it dissolves completely.
Grate the lemon rinds and add them to the mixture.
Store the mixture in a sealed jar or large bottle.
Serve
To serve, use 1 tablespoon of the mixture for each tumbler of water.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 juice for sourness and the rind for aroma.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the juice and balances its acidity.
The step that matters
Mix the lemon juice with the sugar until it dissolves completely. Undissolved sugar settles at the bottom of the jar, so the drink tastes uneven and too sweet at the base. Stirring until clear gives a uniform sweetness throughout the mixture.
“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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