Skip to main content
Drink

Indian Syrup

A sweet syrup made from sugar, citric acid, lemon, and wine spirits, served diluted with cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Spirit and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 701 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Indian Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve 5 pounds of lump sugar and 2 ounces of citric acid in 1 gallon of boiling water.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add ½ dram of essence of lemon and ½ dram of spirits of wine. Stir well and bottle the syrup.

Make the lemon infusion and serve

  1. In a separate jug, combine ½ ounce of cream of tartar, the juice and thin rind of 1 lemon, and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Add sugar to taste and let it cool before using.

  3. For serving, mix 2 tablespoons of syrup with a glass of 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.

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. Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Spirit + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. 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

Lump sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup.
Citric acid
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Adds a tart, acidic note to the lemon infusion.
Lemon juice
Contributes fresh acidity and bright citrus flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, spirit, wine, cream. 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.

You might also like

Lemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesWine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipes