Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓
Lemon Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Juice the lemons and grate the rind of 6 lemons into the juice.
Let the mixture stand overnight.
Make the syrup
In a pot, combine the lemon juice mixture with 6 pounds of white sugar.
Heat until the sugar dissolves and a thick syrup forms.
Allow the syrup to cool, then strain it to remove the rind.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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
- Lemon juice
- Provides the acidity and bright lemon flavor that defines the syrup.
- White sugar
- Provides sweetness and body, thickening into a syrup as it dissolves with heat.
- Lemon rind
- Adds aromatic lemon oils to the mixture, giving extra fragrance before it is strained out.
The step that matters
Heat until the sugar dissolves. Sugar must fully dissolve into the hot lemon juice so no grains remain. Undissolved crystals can recrystallize as the syrup cools, leaving it grainy and unevenly thick.
“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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