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 ↓
Hop Syrup for Cough
Ingredients
Directions
Boil 2 quarts of water with 4 handfuls of hops until reduced to 1 quart.
Strain the mixture.
Add 1.5 lbs of white sugar and the juice of 2 lemons.
Stir well and bottle for use.
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).
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Hops + lemontop 40% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Peachfits better
- Applefits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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