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Drink

Egg Lemonade

A chilled beverage made from boiled sugar water, lemon rind and juice, egg, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

Egg Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemonade

  1. Boil the water with the sugar to make a thin syrup.

  2. Add the grated rind and juice of the lemon.

  3. Let it cool and strain the lemonade.

Finish and serve

  1. Whisk the egg and stir it in lightly.

  2. Add the baking soda just before serving and serve while foaming.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the boiled water to sweeten the thin syrup.
Lemon
Its juice adds sharp acidity and its rind adds aroma.
Egg
Stirred in lightly, it adds body and a soft, foamy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the lemon's acid to release gas, creating the foaming.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda just before serving. Baking soda reacts with the lemon's acid to release carbon dioxide gas, which creates the foam. The reaction starts immediately, so if the baking soda is added too early, the fizz and foam will fade before the drink reaches the table.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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