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Drink

Fine Lemonade

A chilled beverage made with pineapple, lemon juice, sugar, and crushed ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fine Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Chop the pineapple and cover it with white sugar.

  2. Let it sit for a few minutes to extract the juice.

Make the lemonade

  1. Squeeze the juice of the lemons into a pitcher.

  2. Sweeten the lemon juice to taste.

  3. Add the pineapple and fill the pitcher with crushed ice.

Optional additions

  1. Optionally, add a glass of wine for extra flavor.

  2. In summer, you can also add fresh fruits like strawberries or raspberries.

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. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 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

Pineapple
Supplies juice, sweetness and tropical flavor as the main body of the drink.
White sugar
Sweetens the drink and draws juice out of the chopped pineapple.
Lemons
Provide the sharp acidity and fresh citrus juice that balances the sweetness.
Ice
Chills the lemonade and dilutes it slightly as it melts.

The step that matters

Sweeten the lemon juice to taste. Lemon acidity and sugar balance each other, and the sweetness needed depends on how tart the lemons are. Tasting as you go lets you correct the balance before the ice dilutes the drink.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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