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Drink

Staten Island Lemonade

A citrus drink made with lemons, Seville oranges, sugar, sherry, water, and ice.

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 ↓

Staten Island Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Rub loaf sugar on the outside of the lemons and oranges to extract the flavoring oil from the rind.

  2. Roll the fruits to soften them, then press out the juice.

Make the lemonade

  1. Add the sugar to the juice and strain off the seeds.

  2. In a bowl, combine the juice mixture with pounded ice, Sherry, and water.

  3. Shake all together thoroughly.

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. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Lemons
Provide the main acidic juice that gives the drink its sharp, refreshing flavor.
Seville oranges
Add acidity and aromatic bitterness from the juice and rind.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, rubbed on the rind, draws out fragrant flavoring oils.
Sherry
Adds wine-like depth and body to the drink.

The step that matters

Rubbing the sugar on the rind. Rubbing the fruit with sugar lifts aromatic oils from the peel's surface into the sugar, so the flavor is drawn out before juicing. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the lemonade tasting flatter and less fragrant.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, sherry. 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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