Name: Lemon or Orange Syrup
Ingredients: 1 ½ pounds sugar; 1 pint lemon or orange juice; thin parings of lemon or orange

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 ↓

Lemon or Orange Syrup

Ingredients

1 ½ pounds sugar
1 pint lemon or orange juice
thin parings of lemon or orange

Directions

Make the syrup

Clarify the sugar in a pot.
Add the juice and thin parings to the pot.
Boil for 10 minutes.

Cool and bottle

Remove from heat and let it cool.
Bottle the syrup.

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 sweetness and the thick body of the syrup.
Lemon or orange juice: Adds acidity and the main citrus flavor.
Lemon or orange parings: Release aromatic peel oils that add fragrance and bitterness to the syrup.

“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.