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 ↓
Excellent Portable Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Make the mixture
Grate the rind of a lemon and mix it with ¼ pound of sugar.
Reduce the mixture to a powder.
Pour the strained juice of the lemon over the sugar mixture.
Press the mixture into a jar for storage.
Serve
To serve, dissolve 1 tablespoon of the mixture in a glass of water.
If too sweet, add a small amount of citric acid to taste.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Provides sweetness and bulk, and helps bind the lemon oil into a dry mixture.
- Lemon rind
- Adds aromatic lemon oils that give the drink its fragrance and flavour.
- Lemon juice
- Supplies the sourness and fresh citrus flavour of the lemonade.
- Citric acid
- Adds extra sourness to balance sweetness when the drink is too sweet.
The step that matters
Reduce the mixture to a powder. The sugar, rind and juice must be dry and fine enough to dissolve quickly in water. If the mixture stays damp or clumpy, it will not dissolve evenly and the drink will taste uneven.
“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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