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Drink

Fruit Lemonade

A chilled beverage made with boiled water, sugar, fruit rind, preserved fruit juice, and seltzer water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,206 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil water with sugar and the rind of a lemon, orange, or apple.

  2. Add the preserved fruit juice to the mixture.

  3. Top with seltzer water or a mixture of different fruit juices.

  4. Serve chilled.

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. Lemon + strawberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,206 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the fruit juice.
Preserved fruit juice
Provides the main fruit flavor and aroma of the lemonade.
Lemon, orange, or apple rind
Adds aromatic oils that give the drink a citrusy or fruity fragrance.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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