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Drink

Lemonade

A chilled drink made from lemon rind, sugar, water, lemon juice, pale sherbet, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lemonade

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Thinly pare the rinds of 5 lemons.

  2. Combine the rinds with ½ pound of loaf sugar and 1 quart of boiling water in a covered container.

  3. Let the mixture stand until cold.

Finish and strain

  1. Add the juice of the lemons and nearly ½ pint of cowslip or other pale sherbet.

  2. Pour in 1 pint of boiling skimmed milk to break it.

  3. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag until fine.

  4. If not acidic enough, add a little vinegar while straining.

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.

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.

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

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

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 juice for sourness and the rinds for aromatic oil and flavour.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp citrus acidity.
Skimmed milk
Boiling milk curdles the mixture, causing solids to separate so it clarifies when strained.
Cowslip or other pale sherbet
Adds sweetness and a mild, floral-fruity flavour to the drink.

The step that matters

Pouring in the boiling skimmed milk to break it. Boiling milk added to acidic liquid causes the proteins to coagulate and clump, so the cloudy particles can be strained out. Adding it too cold or too little may leave the drink murky.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, vinegar. 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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