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 ↓
Lemon Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Combine the lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan.
Boil slowly for 10 minutes.
Bottle and cork tightly.
Serve
To serve, mix 2 tablespoons of syrup in a glass of ice water.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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, acidic flavor that defines the syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the juice and, once dissolved and boiled, thickens it into a syrup.
The step that matters
Boil slowly for 10 minutes. Dissolving the sugar fully in the juice over gentle heat keeps it from crystallizing or scorching, and the boil gives the syrup a stable, concentrated body for storage.
“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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