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 ↓
To Make Lemonade
Ingredients
Directions
Infuse the peel
Peel 8-10 lemons as thinly as possible.
Place the peel in a jar and pour 2 quarts of boiling water over it.
Cover the jar tightly and let it steep for 2-3 hours.
Sweeten
In a bowl, combine 2 pounds of lump sugar.
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
- Lemons
- Supply the sourness and, through the peel, the fragrant oils that flavour the drink.
- Lump sugar
- Sweetens the drink to balance the lemon's sharp acidity.
The step that matters
Peel the lemons thinly. The white pith under the zest is bitter. Peeling as thinly as possible keeps only the oil-rich outer zest, so the steeped liquid tastes fragrant rather than bitter.
“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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