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Lemonade

A sweetened lemonade made with lemon juice, sugar, hot water, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the lemon infusion

  1. Pare the lemons as thin as possible and place 8 rinds in 3 quarts of hot water. Cover and let steep for 3-4 hours.

  2. Rub fine sugar on the lemons to attract essence, then squeeze the juice into a bowl.

  3. Add 1½ pounds of fine sugar and the hot water to the lemon juice.

Clarify the juice

  1. Mix in 3 quarts of boiling hot milk and strain through a jelly bag until clear.

Make the second infusion and syrup

  1. Steep the peels of 2 Seville oranges and 6 lemons in 1 quart of hot water for 4 hours.

  2. Boil 1¼ pounds of loaf sugar in 3 pints of water, skimming as necessary.

Combine and finish

  1. Combine the two liquids with the juice of 6 China oranges and 12 lemons, stir well, and strain through a jelly bag until clear.

  2. Add a little orange water if desired.

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
Supply the main acidity and the aromatic oils from the peel and juice.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon's sharp acidity.
Loaf sugar
Makes a sweet syrup that is blended into the lemon liquid for sweetness.
Boiling hot milk
Its proteins bind with impurities so they can be strained out, clearing the liquid.

The step that matters

Straining through the jelly bag until clear. Milk proteins coagulate and trap cloudy particles when hot, so the liquid clears only if it is well stirred and strained slowly. Rushing this leaves the lemonade 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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