Name: Lime-juice Cordial
Ingredients: 1 pound double-refined sugar; 1 pint lime juice

Why it works: Sugar and lime are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,332 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Lime-juice Cordial

Ingredients

1 pound double-refined sugar
1 pint lime juice

Directions

In a basin, combine 1 pound of double-refined sugar.
Pour in 1 pint of lime juice and stir with a spoon until the sugar dissolves.
Pour the mixture into a bottle, cork it, and seal.

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.

Sugar + limetop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,332 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Double-refined sugar: Provides sweetness and body, and dissolves into the juice to balance its acidity.
Lime juice: Supplies the sharp, acidic citrus flavour and liquid base of the cordial.

“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.