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Drink

Lemonade or Orangeade

A citrus drink made with spring water, cinnamon, cloves, orange and lemon juice, sugar, and egg whites, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lemonade or Orangeade

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Lemonade or Orangeade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a large pot, combine spring water, cinnamon, cloves, orange juice, lemon juice, and the peels.

  2. Sweeten the mixture with loaf sugar.

  3. Whisk in the egg whites and yolk until well combined.

Heat and strain

  1. Heat the mixture over a brisk fire until it boils.

  2. Once boiling, reduce heat and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag and let it cool before serving.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Egg whites help clarify the drink, binding particles so they can be strained out.
Egg yolk
The yolk adds richness and helps bind the proteins during heating and clarifying.
Loaf sugar
Sugar sweetens the drink and balances the sharpness of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Lemon juice provides the sour, acidic flavour that defines the lemonade.
Orange juice
Orange juice adds sweetness, fruity aroma and acidity to the drink.

The step that matters

Heating the egg-white mixture. Egg whites coagulate as they heat and trap sediment and particles; if the mixture boils too hard or is not allowed to rest, the clarified liquid may turn cloudy or the foam may spill over, so heat should be controlled and the liquid strained carefully.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, orange, lemon, sugar, egg):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, orange, lemon, sugar, egg. 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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