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Mile Lemonade

A citrus drink made with lemons, Seville orange, sugar, water, white wine, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mile Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steep

  1. Slice the lemons and Seville orange.

  2. Sprinkle the sugar over the sliced fruit.

  3. Pour the boiling water and white wine over the fruit and sugar.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 6 hours.

Strain and clarify

  1. Strain the mixture.

  2. Pour in the boiling milk and strain again until clear.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Orange + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together730 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main sour acidity and bright citrus aroma.
Seville orange
Adds sharp acidity and a bitter, fragrant citrus aroma.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sourness of the citrus.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the steeping liquid.
Milk
Its proteins set when hot and trap fine sediment so it can be strained out.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling milk and strain again until clear. Hot milk proteins coagulate and bind fine suspended particles into clumps. Straining after this step removes them, so skipping or rushing the second strain leaves the lemonade cloudy.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, white wine, milk):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, white wine, milk. 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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