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Drink

Flax Seed Lemonade

A cold drink made by steeping flax seeds in boiling water, sweetened with sugar and flavored with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

Flax Seed Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Steep

  1. Pour boiling water over flax seeds in a container.

  2. Cover and steep for 3 hours.

Sweeten and finish

  1. Sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.

  2. Add lemon juice and more water if the mixture is too thick.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Flax seed
Releases soluble gum into the water as it steeps, giving the drink body and a slightly thick texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness, adjusted to taste.

The step that matters

Thinning with more water if too thick. Flax seed gum thickens the liquid the longer it steeps and once lemon is added. Adding water as needed keeps the lemonade pourable and stops the body from becoming gluey.

“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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