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 ↓
Excellent Portable Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Make the lemon base
Grate the rind of the lemon.
Mix the grated rind with the sugar until powdered.
Pour the strained lemon juice over the mixture.
Press the mixture into a jar.
Serve
Dissolve 1 tablespoon of the mixture in a glass of water.
Add a small amount of citric acid to taste if too sweet.
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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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the drink and helps draw oil and flavor out of the lemon rind.
- Lemon rind
- Adds aromatic oils that give the lemonade its fragrance and depth of flavor.
- Lemon juice
- Provides the sour acidity and bright lemon flavor of the drink.
- Citric acid
- Adds extra sourness to balance sweetness when the mixture tastes too sweet.
The step that matters
Mixing the rind with the sugar until powdered. Rubbing the sugar into the rind breaks open the oil-filled cells in the peel, releasing aromatic oils into the sugar. Skipping this leaves the drink tasting flat and less lemony.
“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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