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Drink

Fine Lemonade for Parties

A citrus drink made by mixing lemon rind, sugar, and boiling water, then cooling and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fine Lemonade for Parties

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons over the sugar.

  2. Rub the lemon rind into the sugar until the oil is absorbed.

  3. Add the boiling water and stir until the sugar dissolves.

Chill and serve

  1. Cool the mixture, then place a large piece of ice in a bowl.

  2. Strain the lemonade through a cloth and garnish with seasonal fruits.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Granulated sugar
Sweetens the drink and, when rubbed with rind, draws out and carries the lemon oil.
Lemons
Provide the acidity and fragrant oil from the rind, plus the juice that gives lemonade its tang.
Boiling water
Dissolves the sugar so the sweetness spreads evenly through the liquid.

The step that matters

Rubbing the rind into the sugar. Lemon oils sit in the peel and are released by rubbing them into the sugar crystals. If this is rushed, the drink tastes flat and lacks lemon aroma.

“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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