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 ↓
Lemon Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Squeeze the juice of the lemons into a dish.
Finely pound the lump sugar and sift it through a fine sieve.
Mix the sugar with the lemon juice until very stiff.
Cook and set
Place the mixture in a saucepan and stir over low heat for 5 minutes.
Drop spoonfuls onto writing paper and let them cool.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 acidity and flavour, and with the sugar forms the drop's base mixture.
- Lump sugar
- Provides sweetness and, once cooked and cooled, the firm, brittle structure of the drop.
The step that matters
Stirring over low heat. Heating the sugar and lemon mixture gently keeps it from scorching or turning bitter, while still thickening it enough to hold its shape when dropped and cooled.
“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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