Name: Lemon Syrup
Ingredients: 6 pounds white sugar; juice of lemons; grated rind of lemons

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 ↓

Lemon Syrup

Ingredients

6 pounds white sugar
juice of lemons
grated rind of lemons

Directions

Make the syrup

Dissolve the sugar in water to make a thick syrup and let it stand overnight.
Once cool, strain the lemon juice into the syrup.
Squeeze the grated lemon rind to extract oil and add to taste.

Serve

Mix 1 tablespoon of syrup in a goblet of water for a refreshing drink.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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

White sugar: Provides sweetness and, dissolved in water, thickens into a syrup.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the syrup.
Lemon rind: Adds aroma through the fragrant oil released when squeezed.

“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.