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 ↓
Excellent Portable Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup base
Grate the rind of the lemon.
Mix the grated rind with sugar until powdered.
Pour the strained lemon juice over the sugar mixture.
Press the mixture into a jar.
Serve
To serve, dissolve 1 tablespoon of the mixture in a glass 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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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the drink and, when rubbed with the rind, helps draw out lemon oils.
- Lemon rind
- Adds aromatic lemon oils that give the drink its fragrance.
- Lemon juice
- Provides the sour acidity that balances the sweetness.
The step that matters
Pour the strained lemon juice over the sugar mixture. Straining keeps seeds and pulp out of the jar, so the mixture stays clean and smooth when dissolved later. Sugar and lemon juice together also form a concentrated base that keeps well.
“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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