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Drink

Effervescing Lemonade

A fizzy drink made from sugar, lemon juice, syrup, cold water, and carbonate of soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Effervescing Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar with lemon juice until dissolved.

  2. Bottle and cork the syrup.

Make the drink

  1. In a tumbler, mix 1 tablespoon of syrup with cold water until three-quarters full.

  2. Add 20 grains of carbonate of soda and stir.

  3. Drink quickly.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and lemon 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

White sugar
Dissolves into the lemon juice to form a sweet syrup that balances the sourness.
Lemon juice
Supplies the acidity that gives the drink its sharp, tart flavor and reacts with the soda.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid in the syrup to release carbon dioxide, which makes the drink fizz.

The step that matters

Drink quickly. The fizz comes from carbon dioxide released once the carbonate of soda meets the acidic syrup. That gas escapes from the liquid over time, so the drink loses its effervescence if it is left to stand.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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