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Lemonade, Bottled

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

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 water and boil over low heat.

  2. Once cooled, add acetic acid, tartaric acid, and lemon essence.

Bottle and seal

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

  2. Add carbonate of soda to each bottle and cork immediately.

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.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity and reacts with the carbonate to produce fizz.
Acetic acid
Adds extra sourness that balances the sweetness.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acids to release carbon dioxide, creating the bubbles.
Lemon essence
Gives the drink its lemon aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Corking immediately after adding the carbonate of soda. Carbonate of soda reacts with the acids right away, releasing carbon dioxide gas. If the bottle stays open, the gas escapes and the drink loses its fizz. Sealing at once traps the gas 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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