Name: Lemonade
Ingredients: ½ ounce citric acid crystals; ¾ lb loaf sugar; 1 pint boiling water; 1 teaspoon essence of lemon; cold water

Lemonade

A citrus drink made by dissolving citric acid and sugar in boiling water, then adding lemon essence and diluting with cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients

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 ↓

Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Dissolve citric acid and loaf sugar in boiling water.
Let the mixture cool.
Add essence of lemon.

Serve

For serving, mix 2 or 3 tablespoons of the mixture with cold water in a glass.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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

Citric acid crystals: Provides the sharp, sour taste that makes the drink taste like lemonade.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the sourness of the citric acid.
Essence of lemon: Adds concentrated lemon aroma and flavour.

“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.