Why Adding A Pinch Of Salt To Lemonade Goes A Long Way

There are a few different ways in which you can maximize the flavor of your homemade lemonade. You can start right from the source of your sour beverage itself and make sure you choose the optimal lemons for your lemonade, picking lemons full of tart, citrusy flavor. You can also veer slightly off the standard course and opt to elevate your lemonade with fresh herbs, or even choose to combine your citrus with another fruit for an added flavor burst. But if you really want to perfect the taste of your lemonade, your aid actually comes from a rather unexpected place.

That's right –- just like your favorite batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies, your lemonade will be made that much better with the addition of a little pinch of salt. In the case of lemonade, this addition goes a long way. With it, the tartness present in the lemon's acidity will be kept while diminishing the bitter notes that can also be present, giving you the best of both worlds. Of course, you only need a small modicum of salt in your glass, but with it, you can be sure that you're truly optimizing your lemonade's flavor with minimal effort.

Enhancing your beverage's flavor with salt is certainly not a concept exclusive to freshly-squeezed lemonade. In fact, a pinch of salt can be used to enhance the flavors in everything from stringent dark coffees to generously-tannic red wine. It can even save incredibly hoppy and bitter beers. A simple dash of salt can enhance all of these drinks just as it enhances your lemonade: by cutting down on bitterness. But how does salt do this, and why is it such a universal cure-all to our culinary needs?

When it comes to something as sour as the lemon juice in your lemonade, the taste components of sourness and bitterness are always mingling with each other -– sometimes in a tasty way, but sometimes not. Generally speaking, sourness can help to offset bitterness if it's in sufficient supply (such as in lemons), but so much sourness can be unpleasant in its own right. But when added, salt will help to cut the harshest part of the sourness while also enhancing the overall sourness component, which in turn reduces any bitterness. It's an interesting topic, since all the flavors you taste always exist in relation to each other — and this is just one example of how you can use that knowledge to your advantage!