Name: Marshmallow Lemonade
Ingredients: 1 cup water; juice of 3 lemons; grated peel of 1 lemon; 2 tablespoons sugar; ice water; 2 marshmallows, cut in quarters

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 ↓

Marshmallow Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

In a bottle, combine the water, lemon juice, grated lemon peel, and sugar.

Serve

To serve, pour 4 tablespoons of the mixture into each glass.
Fill the glass with ice water and add the marshmallow quarters.

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 sour, tart flavour that balances the sweetness.
Sugar: Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Grated lemon peel: Adds fragrant lemon oils that give aroma beyond the juice's sourness.
Marshmallows: Add sweetness and a soft, chewy texture 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.