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Drink

Ginger Lemonade

A chilled beverage made with currant jelly, sugar, ginger, and ice water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Ginger Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine currant jelly, sugar, and ginger in a quart pitcher, then stir well until mixed.

Dilute and adjust

  1. Fill the pitcher with ice water.

  2. Adjust sweetness or tartness by adding more ingredients if desired.

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 + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Currant + gingertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together834 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Currant jelly
Adds fruity flavor and sweetness to the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemonade.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and flavor.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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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