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Drink

Egg Lemonade

A chilled beverage made with egg, sugar, lemon juice, cold water, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Egg Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the egg and sugar together until very light.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice and cold water until well blended.

  3. Add the pounded ice and mix gently.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately through a straw.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Egg
Beaten with sugar, it traps air and gives the drink a light, frothy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps the egg hold its whipped structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the drink its sharp, fresh lemon flavour.
Pounded ice
Chills the drink and slowly dilutes it as it melts.

The step that matters

Beat the egg and sugar until very light. Beating incorporates air into the egg and dissolves the sugar, creating a foam that gives the lemonade its light, frothy texture. Under-beating leaves a dense, flat drink.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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