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 ↓
Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Dissolve 1 dram of citric acid in 2 quarts of water.
Add loaf sugar to taste.
Rub the sugar on fresh lemon or Seville orange peel to release essential oils before adding it to the mixture.
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
- Citric acid
- Provides the sour, tart taste that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
- Loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness, adjusted to taste to offset the sourness of the citric acid.
- Lemon or seville orange peel
- Supplies aromatic essential oils that give the lemonade its citrus fragrance and flavor.
The step that matters
Rubbing the sugar on the peel. Rubbing the sugar against the peel lifts the fragrant oils from the skin's outer layer into the sugar crystals, which then dissolve and carry that aroma into the drink. Skipping this step leaves the lemonade tasting flatter and less citrusy.
“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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