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Excellent Lemonade

A chilled lemonade made with lemon peel, sugar, water, wine, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Excellent Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the peels

  1. Pare the lemons very thinly.

  2. Add the peels to a bowl with the loaf sugar and boiling spring water; stir and set aside for a day.

Finish and strain

  1. Squeeze in the juice of the 10 lemons.

  2. Add the white wine and boiling new milk; mix well.

  3. When cold, strain through a jelly bag for immediate use.

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 + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. White wine + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together929 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  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
Provide the main acidity and bright citrus aroma, with peel oils flavouring the sugar syrup.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharp acidity of the lemon juice.
White wine
Adds acidity and extra aromatic flavour to the drink.
New milk
Its proteins curdle with the acid, and the curds carry away cloudiness so the drink clears.

The step that matters

Strain only when cold. Milk curdles in the acidic liquid, and the curds need time to set and clump. Straining while hot or warm lets fine curds pass through the jelly bag, leaving the lemonade cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, 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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