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Drink

Lemonade

A citrus drink made from Seville orange and lemon peel, juice, sugar, water, and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemonade

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Thinly peel the oranges and lemons.

  2. Steep the peelings in 2 quarts of water for 4 hours.

Make and finish the lemonade

  1. Juice the 2 Seville oranges and 6 lemons.

  2. Combine the juice with ¾ pound of sugar until melted.

  3. Add the steeped water to the sugar mixture.

  4. Add a little orange flower water and more sugar if needed.

  5. Strain through a bag until fine and pour into bottles.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Seville oranges
Provide bitter aromatic flavour from their peel and sharp juice.
Lemons
Supply the main acidity and fresh citrus flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances its sharp acidity.

“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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