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Transparent Lemonade

A clear lemonade made with lemon peel, juice, sugar, white wine, and milk, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Transparent Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the peel of 14 lemons in 2 quarts of water for 2 hours.

  2. Add the lemon juice, 1½ pounds of sugar, and 1 quart of white wine.

  3. Heat 1 quart of milk until boiling, then mix it with the lemon mixture.

  4. Let it stand for 1 hour, then strain 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. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  3. White wine + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together929 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  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 sour juice and aromatic oils from the peel for the drink's main flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sourness of the lemons.
White wine
Adds body and a fruity flavor alongside the lemon.
Milk
Its proteins curdle in the acid and trap particles, so straining leaves the drink clear.

The step that matters

Mixing the boiling milk into the lemon mixture. Hot milk meeting the acidic lemon liquid curdles and traps cloudy particles. Letting it stand before straining gives those curds time to form, so the jelly bag can catch them and leave the drink clear.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, 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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