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Drink

Lemonade

A citrus drink made by steeping lemon rinds in hot water, adding sugar and milk, then straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemonade

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavour

  1. Pare the lemons as thin as possible.

  2. Put 8 rinds into 3 quarts of hot water.

  3. Cover the mixture for 3-4 hours.

  4. Rub fine sugar on the lemons to attract essence.

Make the lemonade

  1. Squeeze the juice of the lemons into a bowl.

  2. Add 1½ pounds of fine sugar to the lemon juice.

  3. Mix in the hot water and the boiling milk.

  4. Strain the mixture through a jelly-bag until clear.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemons
Provide the juice and aromatic oils that give the drink its sharp, fragrant flavour.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Boiling milk
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the lemon, and clarifies the drink when strained.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a jelly-bag until clear. Milk curdles the lemon juice and forms solids; straining slowly through a jelly-bag separates these curds so the drink runs clear rather than cloudy.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, 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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