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 ↓
Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pare the lemons as thin as possible.
Put 8 lemon rinds into hot water and cover for 3-4 hours.
Rub some sugar on the lemons to attract essence.
Make the lemonade
Squeeze the juice of the lemons into a bowl.
Add the sugar to the bowl.
Mix in the hot water and strain through a jelly-bag until clear.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Lemons
- Provide the juice and aromatic oils that give the lemonade its sour, fragrant flavour.
- Fine sugar
- Sweetens the lemon juice and balances its acidity.
- Hot water
- Dissolves the sugar and extracts flavour from the lemon rinds.
The step that matters
Paring the lemons as thin as possible. Thick pith contains bitter compounds that leach into the liquid, so only the thin oil-rich peel should be removed to keep the lemonade bright rather than bitter.
“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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