Name: Bran Lemonade
Ingredients: ½ cup bran; 4 cups water; juice of 4 lemons; icing sugar to taste

Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Bran Lemonade

Ingredients

½ cup bran
4 cups water
juice of 4 lemons
icing sugar to taste

Directions

Make the bran infusion

Combine bran and water in a bowl and let it sit for 30 minutes in a cool place.
Strain the mixture to remove the bran, retaining the liquid.

Finish the lemonade

Add the lemon juice to the liquid.
Sweeten with icing sugar to taste.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 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

Bran: Steeps in water to release flavour and body into the liquid before being strained out.
Lemon juice: Provides acidity that gives the lemonade its sharp, refreshing taste.
Icing sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon juice.

“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.