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 ↓
Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Rub the sugar on the lemon rinds to extract the essential oil.
Juice the lemons and add the juice to a jug.
Add the sugar and water to the jug, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
Serve chilled.
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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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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the drink and, rubbed on the rinds, draws out aromatic lemon oil.
- Lemons
- Provide the sour acidity and bright aroma that define the drink.
- Water
- Dilutes the juice and sugar into a drinkable volume.
The step that matters
Dissolve the sugar fully. Undissolved sugar sinks and leaves the drink unevenly sweet. Stirring until the crystals disappear gives an even sweetness throughout the jug.
“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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