Name: Lemon Syrup
Ingredients: juice of 12 lemons; grated rind of 6 lemons; 6 pounds white sugar

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 Syrup

Ingredients

juice of 12 lemons
grated rind of 6 lemons
6 pounds white sugar

Directions

Prepare the lemons

Juice the lemons.
Grate the rind of 6 lemons into the juice.
Let the mixture stand overnight.

Make the syrup

In a pot, combine 6 pounds of white sugar with water to make a thick syrup.
Once the syrup is cool, strain the lemon juice into it.
Squeeze the grated rind to extract oil to taste.

Serve

Serve 1 tablespoon of syrup in a goblet of water for a refreshing drink.

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.

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

Lemon juice: Provides the sour, acidic flavour that defines the syrup.
Grated lemon rind: Adds aromatic oils that give the syrup its lemon fragrance.
White sugar: Sweetens the syrup and thickens it into a concentrated base.

“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.