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, Bottled
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Dissolve the sugar in water and boil over low heat.
Add acetic acid and tartaric acid, then let it cool.
Once cooled, mix in the lemon essence.
Bottle and seal
Pour 1/6 of the mixture into each bottle filled with water.
Add carbonate of soda to each bottle and cork immediately.
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.
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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
- Loaf sugar
- Provides sweetness and body to the syrup.
- Tartaric acid
- Supplies the sharp, sour bite that gives the lemonade its tang.
- Acetic acid
- Adds additional acidity to the mixture.
- Carbonate of soda
- Reacts with the acids to release carbon dioxide, making the drink fizz.
The step that matters
Corking immediately after adding carbonate of soda. Carbonate of soda reacts with the acids to release carbon dioxide. If the bottle is left open, the gas escapes and the lemonade loses its fizz, so the bottle should be corked right away.
“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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