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Drink

Staten Island Lemonade

A citrus drink made with lemons, Seville oranges, sugar, sherry, and water, served over ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Staten Island Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Rub loaf sugar on the outside of the lemons and oranges to extract the flavoring oil.

  2. Roll the fruits to soften them, then press out the juice.

  3. Add the sugar to the juice and strain off the seeds.

Mix and serve

  1. Combine the juice with Sherry and water in a bowl.

  2. Shake all together thoroughly.

  3. Serve over pounded ice.

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

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

  2. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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 sharp acidity and much of the juice that gives the drink its tang.
Seville oranges
Add bitter-sour juice and aromatic oil from the peel, adding depth to the flavor.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, rubbed on the fruit, draws out aromatic oil from the peel.
Sherry
Adds wine body and a dry, nutty flavor that balances the citrus.

The step that matters

Rubbing the fruit with loaf sugar. Sugar rubbed on the peel abrades the skin and pulls out the fragrant citrus oils stored in the peel. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the drink flat in aroma, since those oils are not released by juice alone.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, sherry. 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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