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To Make Lemon Syrup

A clear lemon syrup made by boiling lemon juice with sugar and water.

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 ↓

To Make Lemon Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rind of four lemons as thinly as possible.

  2. Squeeze the lemons and strain the juice.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the water, rind, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Heat the mixture and skim until clear.

  3. Add the lemon juice and boil for about eight minutes.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle and seal the syrup.

  2. Store the syrup in a cool place for months.

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

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and the body of the syrup, and helps preserve it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the syrup.
Lemon rind
Contributes aromatic oils that give the syrup its lemon aroma.

The step that matters

Skim until clear. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise as the sugar syrup heats. Leaving them in can cloud the syrup and affect its keeping quality.

“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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