Name: Flax Seed Lemonade
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons flax seed (whole); 1 quart boiling water; juice of 2 lemons; sugar to taste; cold water (if needed); ice for serving

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 ↓

Flax Seed Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Pour boiling water over the flax seed in a covered pitcher.
Add the juice of the lemons, discarding the peels.
Sweeten to taste and let steep for 3 hours.
If the mixture is too thick, add cold water along with the lemon juice and sugar.
Serve over ice.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 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

Flax seed: Swells in hot water and releases a mucilage that thickens the drink.
Lemon juice: Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sugar: Sweetens the drink to taste, balancing the lemon's tartness.

“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.