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Drink

Very Good Lemonade

A chilled lemonade made with lemon juice, peel, sugar, boiling water, sherry, and whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Very Good Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemonade

  1. Pare the lemons very thinly and squeeze out all the juice.

  2. In a large basin, combine the lemon juice, peel, and sugar.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. In a glass jug, add the sherry and the stiffly whipped egg white.

  2. Strain the lemonade into the jug over the sherry and egg white.

  3. Add ice 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.

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 + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 peel that give the drink its bright acidity and citrus aroma.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Sherry
Adds wine flavour and body to the lemonade.
Egg white
Whipped foam adds a light, frothy texture to the drink.

The step that matters

Straining the lemonade over the sherry and egg white. Pouring the lemonade in gently and straining it keeps the whipped egg white light and foamy rather than collapsing it. Sugar must be fully dissolved in the hot water first so the drink tastes evenly sweet.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, egg. 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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