Name: Summer Lemonade
Ingredients: 1 lb loaf sugar; 1 quart water; 1 oz tartaric acid; 30 drops lemon essence

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 ↓

Summer Lemonade

Ingredients

1 lb loaf sugar
1 quart water
1 oz tartaric acid
30 drops lemon essence

Directions

Make the syrup

In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water.
Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes.
Pour into a basin and let it cool.

Flavour and serve

Add the tartaric acid and lemon essence.
Use ½ cup of the mixture in a tumbler of cold water or claret and water.

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 + 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

Sugar: Provides the sweetness that balances the sharpness of the acid.
Tartaric acid: Supplies the sour, tart bite that makes the drink taste like lemonade.
Lemon essence: Adds the lemon aroma and flavour.

“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.