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Lemon Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, sugar, lemon juice and peel, with bread and yeast to aid fermentation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Wine

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 Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Pare the lemons very thin.

  2. Place half the peel in a tub.

  3. Boil the sugar and water together.

  4. Pour the boiled sugar and water over the lemon peel.

  5. Allow the mixture to cool.

  6. Add the lemon juice.

Ferment and bottle

  1. If fermentation does not start in a few days, add a slice of bread covered with yeast.

  2. Remove the lemon peel.

  3. Transfer the liquid into a cask.

  4. Seal the cask when fermentation ceases.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 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
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides the sweetness that the finished wine keeps.
Lemon juice
Supplies acidity and the main lemon flavour of the wine.
Yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic oils and bitter flavour to the liquid while it steeps.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool before adding the lemon juice. Yeast is killed or stressed by very hot liquid, so the sugar-water must be cool before the juice and yeast are added for fermentation to start reliably.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread. 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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