Name: Lemonade Powder
Ingredients: 8 drachms tartaric acid (about 1 ounce); 14 ounces sugar; 24 drops oil of lemon

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 Powder

Ingredients

8 drachms tartaric acid (about 1 ounce)
14 ounces sugar
24 drops oil of lemon

Directions

Prepare the powder

Combine tartaric acid and sugar in a bowl.
Add the oil of lemon and mix well.
Store in an airtight container.

Make lemonade

To make lemonade, mix 2 tablespoons of the powder with 1 cup of water.

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.

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

Tartaric acid: Provides the sour, tart taste that gives the lemonade its bite.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the sourness of the tartaric acid.
Oil of lemon: Supplies concentrated lemon aroma and flavour.

“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.