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Lemonade, Bottled

A preserved lemonade made by boiling sugar and water, adding acids, lemon essence, and soda, then bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemonade, Bottled

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water and boil over low heat.

  2. Add the acetic acid and tartaric acid.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool, then add the essence of lemon.

Bottle and seal

  1. Pour one-sixth of the mixture into each bottle filled with water.

  2. Add the carbonate of soda to each bottle, cork immediately, and it will be ready for use.

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).

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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup.
Acetic acid
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness.
Tartaric acid
Adds tartness and helps produce the fizz when combined with soda.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acids to release carbon dioxide, creating effervescence.

The step that matters

Adding the carbonate of soda and corking immediately. Carbonate of soda reacts with the acids to release carbon dioxide gas. If the bottle is left open, the gas escapes and the lemonade loses its fizz, so corking right away keeps the carbonation in the liquid.

“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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