Name: Lemonade — Portable, Convenient and Excellent
Ingredients: 1 oz powdered tartaric or citric acid; 6 oz powdered sugar; 2 teaspoons extract of lemon

Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

Lemonade — Portable, Convenient and Excellent

Ingredients

1 oz powdered tartaric or citric acid
6 oz powdered sugar
2 teaspoons extract of lemon

Directions

Make the powder

Mix the powdered tartaric or citric acid, powdered sugar, and extract of lemon thoroughly.
Let the mixture dry in the sun.
Rub the mixture together after drying and divide it into 23 powders.

Serve

To make lemonade, use one powder per glass of water.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Tartaric or citric acid: Provides the sour taste that makes the drink taste like lemonade.
Powdered sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the sourness of the acid.
Extract of lemon: Adds lemon aroma and flavor.

“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.