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Apricot and Lemonade

A chilled beverage made from apricot juice, lemon juice, water, sugar, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,098 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot and Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Cook apricots until tender, then drain to obtain 1 cup of juice.

Make the lemonade

  1. In a large pitcher, combine the apricot juice, 1 quart of water, and the juice from 3 lemons.

  2. If the apricots were cooked with sugar, use ½ cup of sugar; otherwise, adjust to taste.

  3. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then add enough cracked ice to chill before serving.

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. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  3. 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

Apricot juice
Provides the main fruit flavor and a mellow, floral sweetness.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the tartness of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully before chilling. Sugar dissolves much more readily in warm liquid than in cold liquid or over ice. If it is added to cold lemonade and stirred briefly, grains can settle at the bottom, leaving the drink unevenly sweet. Stirring until the sugar is fully dissolved first ensures every glass tastes consistent.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar. 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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