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Lemonade, Nourishing, for Fever Patients

A lemon-based drink with arrowroot thickening, sweetened with sugar, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemonade, Nourishing, for Fever Patients

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl or pitcher, mix arrowroot with cold water until smooth.

  2. Squeeze in the lemon juice and add sugar.

  3. Pour in boiling water while stirring constantly until the dish is full.

  4. Cover and let it cool before serving.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

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

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

Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the drink a light, smooth body.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Pour in boiling water while stirring constantly. Arrowroot starch thickens quickly when hot. Constant stirring disperses it evenly so the drink thickens smoothly without lumps or clumps.

“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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