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Lemon Wine, Quickly Made

A sweetened lemon-flavored wine made by boiling water, sugar, citric acid, lemon essence, wine spirits, and saffron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 538 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lemon Wine, Quickly Made

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil water with sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add citric acid to the mixture.

  3. Let the liquid cool.

Flavor and color

  1. Stir in essence of lemon and spirits of wine.

  2. Color with a little saffron.

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 + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Wine + saffrontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Spirit + saffrontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the drink.
Citric acid
Adds sourness that brightens the lemon flavor.
Essence of lemon
Supplies the main lemon aroma and flavor.
Spirits of wine
Carries the lemon aroma and adds a slight alcohol note.

The step that matters

Let the liquid cool before adding the flavorings. Essence of lemon and spirits of wine are volatile, so heat drives off their aroma. Adding them to a cooled liquid helps keep the lemon scent in the finished drink.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, spirit, wine. 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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