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 ↓
Lemon Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil the sugar and water together for a few minutes.
Add the acid and stir until it dissolves.
Strain the mixture into a basin.
Finish and bottle
Add the lemon essence and let it cool before bottling.
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 body, and dissolves into the boiling water to form the syrup.
- Citric acid or tartaric acid
- Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the syrup its lemony tang.
- Lemon essence
- Supplies the lemon aroma and flavour.
The step that matters
Adding the acid. Acid is added after the sugar has dissolved in boiling water, and stirring until it fully dissolves keeps the acid evenly distributed so the syrup tastes balanced rather than sharp in spots.
“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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