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Drink

Fruit Lemonade

A chilled beverage made with lemon juice, seasonal fruit juice, sugar syrup, 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 syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix together the lemon juice and the juice of your chosen seasonal fruit.

  2. Sweeten the mixture with sugar syrup to taste.

  3. Add 3 to 4 times as much ice water to the mixture.

  4. Serve thoroughly iced.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Currant + pineappletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + syruptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the lemonade its bright flavour.
Seasonal fruit juice
Adds the main fruit flavour and aroma, with its own natural acidity and sweetness.
Sugar syrup
Sweetens the drink and softens the sourness of the citrus and fruit juices.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pineapple, sugar, syrup. 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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