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Drink

Lemonade

A citrus drink made with lemon juice, orange, sugar syrup, and Shasta water.

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

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and sugar together to make a syrup.

  2. Add the lemon rinds to the syrup and let stand for 1 hour.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove the rinds and add the strained juice of the lemons and the sliced orange.

  2. Pour the lemonade into a bowl with a block of ice in the center.

  3. Add strawberries if desired.

  4. Add the Shasta water just 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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 main acidity and bright flavor, with their rinds adding aromatic oils to the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the lemon's acidity.
Orange
Adds extra citrus aroma and a mild sweetness to the juice.

The step that matters

Add the Shasta water just before serving. Adding the carbonated water too early lets its fizz escape, leaving the lemonade flat. Holding it back keeps the drink lively and sparkling.

“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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