Name: Lemon Syrup
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; ½ cup lemon juice; 2 cups water

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 ↓

Lemon Syrup

Ingredients

1 cup sugar
½ cup lemon juice
2 cups water

Directions

Make the syrup

In a saucepan, combine sugar and water.
Boil for 12 minutes to create a syrup.
Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.

Finish and store

Cool the syrup and dilute with cold or hot water to taste.
Bottle the syrup for later use.

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.

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

Sugar: Provides sweetness and body, and helps the syrup stay stable and pourable.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the sweetness.

“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.