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Lemonade, Effervescing

A fizzy lemonade made with lemon juice, sugar, water, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Lemonade, Effervescing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the sugar on the lemon rind to release oils.

  2. Mix the lemon juice and sugar in a large tumbler.

Make and serve

  1. Pour in the cold or iced water.

  2. Add the baking soda and stir well.

  3. Serve immediately while effervescing.

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).

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 juice
Provides sourness and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to produce the fizz.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the lemon juice.
Baking soda
Reacts with the lemon's acid to release carbon dioxide bubbles, creating the effervescence.

The step that matters

Serve immediately after adding the baking soda. The carbon dioxide formed when baking soda meets the lemon's acid escapes as gas quickly, so the fizz fades within minutes. Stir briefly, then serve before the lemonade goes flat.

“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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