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Drink

Italian Lemonade

A chilled lemon drink made with lemon juice, sugar, water, sherry, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,479 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Italian Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Squeeze the lemons.

  2. Mix the juice with sugar in an earthen bowl.

  3. Let it stand overnight.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Make the lemonade

  1. Add boiling water and sherry.

  2. Shake or beat well.

  3. Carefully add boiling milk.

  4. Strain again.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill thoroughly.

  2. Serve over chopped 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.

  1. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  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. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Lemons
Provide the juice that gives the drink its sharp, acidic citrus flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances the lemon's acidity.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a warm, winey depth of flavour.
Boiling milk
Adds body and softness, mellowing the sharpness of the lemon.
Boiling water
Dilutes the concentrated juice to a drinkable strength and dissolves the sugar.

The step that matters

Carefully add boiling milk. Milk proteins can curdle when hot milk meets acidic lemon juice. Adding the milk slowly while stirring spreads the heat and acid evenly, and straining again removes any curds that form.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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