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Italian Lemonade

A sweetened lemon drink made with lemon juice, sugar, sherry, boiling water, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,479 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Italian Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and press the lemons to extract the juice.

  2. Pour the juice over the lemon peels and let it sit overnight.

Make the lemonade

  1. In the morning, add the sugar, sherry, and boiling water; mix well.

  2. Add the boiling milk and strain the mixture through a jelly bag until clear.

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. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Lemons
Provide the juice and the peel, which adds aromatic oils while steeping overnight.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharp acidity of the lemon juice.
Sherry
Adds depth and aroma to the drink.
Milk
Its proteins curdle with the acid, and straining removes the solids to leave the drink clear.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk. Hot milk meeting the acidic lemon mixture curdles its proteins, which clump and are removed by straining. Straining through a jelly bag until clear is what gives the finished drink its clarity.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, milk. 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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