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Lemonade, to Be Made the Day Before Man Ted

A lemonade made from steeped lemon rind, lemon juice, sugar and boiling hot milk, prepared a day ahead.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemonade, to Be Made the Day Before Man Ted

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the peel

  1. Pare the lemons as thin as possible and put 8 rinds into 3 quarts of hot water.

  2. Cover and let it steep for 3-4 hours.

Make the lemonade

  1. Rub fine sugar on the lemons to attract the essence, then squeeze the juice into a bowl.

  2. Add 1½ pounds of fine sugar to the lemon juice.

  3. Pour the infused water and 3 quarts of boiling hot milk into the mixture, then mix well.

  4. Strain through a jelly bag until perfectly clear.

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

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. 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 sharp acidity and the aromatic oils from the peel.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the lemon juice.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy body to the drink.

The step that matters

Pouring in the boiling hot milk. Lemon juice is acidic, and acid can cause milk proteins to curdle and turn grainy. Pour the hot milk in with the infused water and mix well, so the acid and milk combine evenly before straining.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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