Name: Gin Flinch
Ingredients: 1 pint water; rind and juice of ½ lemon; 2 ounces loaf sugar

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 ↓

Gin Flinch

Ingredients

1 pint water
rind and juice of ½ lemon
2 ounces loaf sugar

Directions

Combine water, lemon rind, and lemon juice in a pitcher.
Add loaf sugar and stir until dissolved.
Serve chilled over ice.

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

Lemon juice: Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and dissolves into the water to balance the lemon's tartness.
Lemon rind: Contributes aromatic oils that add lemon fragrance and flavor to the drink.

“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.