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Drink

Lemonade

A citrus drink made by combining sugar, lemon juice, water, and optional aromatics such as lemon peel and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lemonade

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water for 12 minutes to make syrup.

  2. Add lemon juice to the syrup.

  3. Cool the mixture.

  4. Dilute with ice-water to taste.

Make the infusion

  1. For another method, place lemon peel and cloves in a bottle with hot water.

  2. Put the bottle in a bain-marie or stewpan with boiling water for 1-2 hours without boiling.

  3. Let the infusion cool.

  4. Mix the cooled infusion with fresh lemon juice, sugar, and orange-flower water.

  5. Stir well.

  6. Add cold 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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
Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides the sour, bright flavour that defines the lemonade.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic oils and bitter flavour to the infused version.

The step that matters

Keep the infusion below boiling. Boiling the bottle in the bain-marie would extract harsh, bitter compounds from the lemon peel and can make the flavour unpleasant. A gentle, sub-boiling heat draws out the aromatic oils cleanly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange. 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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