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
Peel the lemons very thin and place half of the peel in a tub.
Boil the sugar and water together, then pour it hot over the lemon peel.
Ferment
Once cooled, add the lemon juice.
Ferment with yeast on a toast if necessary.
Remove the peel, cask the liquor, and bung it down when fermentation ceases.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Loaf sugar
- Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the wine.
- Yeast
- Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
The step that matters
Adding the sugar syrup to the peel while hot. Pouring boiling syrup over the peel extracts its oils and flavour, and the liquid must be cooled before the juice and yeast are added so the yeast is not killed by heat.
“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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