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Drink

Lime Juice

A citrus beverage made by boiling water with sugar, lemon essence, citric acid, and saffron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 538 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lime Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 4 quarts of water.

  2. In a large basin, combine 2 lbs of sifted sugar, 1 teaspoon of essence of lemon, and 1 teaspoon of citric acid.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and stir until dissolved.

Colour and serve

  1. Tie saffron in a piece of muslin and leave it in the basin until the mixture turns yellow.

  2. Serve a small quantity in a tumbler of water for a refreshing drink.

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 + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the concentrated drink.
Citric acid
Adds sharp acidity that gives the drink its tart lime-like bite.
Saffron
Releases a yellow colour into the mixture while steeping.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar in boiling water. Sugar dissolves far more readily in hot water than cold, so stirring while the water is boiling helps prevent grainy syrup and ensures the sweetness is evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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