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Drink

Jelly Lemonade

A citrus jelly made from orange and lemon rind, sugar, and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Jelly Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Thinly peel the yellow rind from the oranges and lemons.

  2. Steep the rind in 1 quart of hot water for 4 hours.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the loaf sugar in 3 pints of water, skimming until clear.

  2. Combine the two mixtures.

Finish and store

  1. Add the juice of 6 oranges and 12 lemons, then mix and strain through a jelly bag until clear.

  2. Keep cool until ready to use.

  3. For storage, pour into clean glass bottles and cork tightly.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the drink.
Lemons
Supply the main acidity and sharp citrus flavour.
Oranges
Add sweet-tart citrus juice and aroma to the drink.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiled sugar syrup until clear. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise as the sugar boils, so the syrup and finished drink stay clear rather than cloudy.

“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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