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Drink

Fine Lemonade for Parties

A citrus drink made with lemon rind, juice, sugar, water, and optional egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fine Lemonade for Parties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the rinds of the lemons on the sugar until the sugar absorbs the oil.

  2. Combine the sugar and lemon juice in a jug, ensuring no seeds are included.

Make and serve

  1. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and stir until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Strain the lemonade through muslin and let it cool before serving.

  3. For a richer flavor, beat the whites of 4 eggs and mix them in.

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.

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

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Lemon rind
Lends aromatic oil from the peel to the sugar, adding fragrance and flavor.
Lemon juice
Provides the sour acidity that balances the sweetness of the drink.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the drink and dissolves in the hot water to form a syrup.
Eggs
Whites add body and a softer, richer mouthfeel to the lemonade.

The step that matters

Rubbing the rinds into the sugar. Lemon oil sits in the peel, and rubbing it into the sugar transfers that aromatic oil to the crystals. Rinds left out of this step give a weaker, less fragrant lemon flavor.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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