Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓
Lemon-syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Heat lemon juice in a brass pan over a gentle fire.
Stir in the sugar frequently until it becomes a syrup.
Remove from heat and let it cool.
Bottle the syrup for use.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 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
- Lemon juice
- Provides the acidity and main flavour, and forms the liquid base of the syrup.
- Sugar
- Dissolves into the warm juice to thicken it into a sweet, syrupy consistency.
The step that matters
Stirring in the sugar. Stirring frequently helps the sugar dissolve fully into the warm juice, so no grains remain and the syrup stays smooth rather than gritty.
“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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