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 Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Make the liquid
Boil the leaf sugar in water for 30 minutes.
Pour the liquid over the thin rind of the lemons.
Make the syrup
Squeeze the juice from the lemons and boil it with 2 pounds of sugar to make a syrup.
Ferment and bottle
Mix the syrup with the liquid and let it cool.
Add a little yeast to the mixture.
Keep the barrel filled until fermentation subsides, then seal it.
Bottle the wine after 3 months.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Leaf sugar
- Provides the main sweetness and the sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol.
- Lemons
- Supply the acidity and aroma, with the rind adding fragrant oils and the juice adding tartness.
- Yeast
- Converts sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to the syrup and provides additional sugar for fermentation.
The step that matters
Keep the barrel filled until fermentation subsides. Keeping the container full limits contact with air, which can let spoilage microbes and oxidation take hold while fermentation is still active. Sealing only after fermentation has slowed helps the wine stay stable.
“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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