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Lemonade with Wine and Milk

A chilled beverage made from lemon juice, sugar, sherry, milk, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,479 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Lemonade with Wine and Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon base

  1. Grate the yellow peel of half a lemon into a bowl.

  2. Add ½ cup of loaf sugar and pour the strained juice of 1½ lemons over it.

  3. Let it stand for two hours.

Finish and chill

  1. Add ⅓ cup of sherry and 1 quart of boiling milk.

  2. Strain through a flannel bag.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Keep it on ice until served.

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. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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
Sweetens the drink and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma; the juice sharpens the drink and the peel adds fragrance.
Sherry
Adds wine flavour and aroma to the drink.
Milk
Adds body and softness, and mellows the sharpness of the lemon and wine.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk. Hot milk meeting acidic lemon juice and wine can curdle it. Adding the milk to the lemon base, then straining through a flannel bag, separates the curds and leaves a clear, smooth drink.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sherry, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, milk. 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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