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 Beer
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Slice the lemons and place them in a pot or jar.
Pour the sugar over the lemons.
Add the boiling water and let it cool.
Ferment
Once cool, stir in the yeast.
Allow it to ferment.
Bottle
In the evening, bottle the mixture in stone jugs and cork tightly.
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 sharp, acidic citrus flavor that defines the drink.
- White sugar
- Feeds the yeast and provides the sweetness that the fermentation converts into alcohol and carbonation.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugar, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The step that matters
Stir in the yeast only once the water has cooled. Yeast is sensitive to heat. Very hot liquid can kill or weaken it, so the mixture must cool before the yeast goes in, or fermentation may fail.
“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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