Skip to main content
Drink

Lemonade, Effervescing

A sweetened lemon drink made by boiling sugar in lemon juice, then carbonated with soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lemonade, Effervescing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar in lemon juice until dissolved.

  2. Pour the syrup out and let it cool.

  3. Bottle the syrup and cork it tightly.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, mix 1 tablespoon of syrup with a tumbler of cold water.

  2. Stir in the carbonate of soda and drink while effervescing.

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).

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

Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the lemon juice to form a sweet syrup that balances the acidity.
Lemon juice
Provides the acidity and lemon flavour of the syrup.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acidic syrup to release carbon dioxide, making the drink effervesce.

The step that matters

Stir in the carbonate of soda and drink while effervescing. Carbonate of soda reacts with the acid in the lemon syrup to release carbon dioxide gas. The fizz fades as the gas escapes, so the drink should be finished soon after mixing.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes