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Drink

Effervescent Draught

A fizzy lemon drink made with lemon juice, cold water, sugar, and bicarbonate of soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Effervescent Draught

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and strain it.

  2. Add the lemon juice to a tumbler of cold water.

  3. Stir in the pounded sugar.

Serve

  1. Add the bicarbonate of soda and drink while effervescing.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 sharp acidity that gives the drink its tang and reacts with the bicarbonate.
Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the lemon's acid to release carbon dioxide, creating the fizz.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Add the bicarbonate of soda and drink while effervescing. The bicarbonate and acid react immediately to release carbon dioxide bubbles, and the gas escapes as the drink sits, so it should be drunk right away while still fizzing.

“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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