[ivantt]

I am trying to find out how many drops of lemon
extract equal one (1) teaspoon of lemon juice in
flavor.

I am trying to duplicate a lemon sauce that my mom
made and put over spice cake and gingerbread. All
the recipes I have found call for lemon juice but I am
sure she used lemon extract as she always had lots
of extracts but very seldom fresh lemons.

[Suzanne]

Lemon extract is very different from lemon juice. According to McCormick's, their Pure Lemon Extract is alcohol, water, and lemon oil. So you're not going to get the same tart flavor from lemon extract that you will from juice -- you'll get that lemon-zest flavor instead.

If that's all right with you, you can use extract in place of juice. How much? Um . . . I don't know. So I'm putting a copy of this thread where the pastry chefs here can see it!

[ivantt]

Thanks Suzanne for your reply. What I remember about
the sauce is that it had a lemony flaver but was very smooth
tasting and not tart at all. Which leads me to believe that
she did "in fact" use extract instead of juice.

I hope someone replies to your reposting of the thread
and thanks again.

[JonK]

Since the flavor profile you'll get from lemon juice vs. lemon extract is so completely different, I don't think one can come up with an equivalent (and none of my usual reference have one). My suggestion is, I'm afraid, the obvious one. Since it's a sauce that you can taste as you go along, just experiment. Start with a half tsp of extract for every three tbsp of lemon juice and add more as needed. (Different lemon extracts and lemon flavorings vary in their concentration of lemon oil.) I like the contrasting tartness that lemon juice offers to the spicy sweetness of gingerbread, but--hey--that's the way MY mom did it!

[foodpump]

Why bother with extracts? The good ones are destilled from lemon peels, first batch is sold as food extracts, the second batch as industrial perfumes for furniture polish and the like. I'm not knocking the good stuff, but it doesn't taste like fresh lemons.

If you squeeze a fresh lemon and throw it away, that's about the same as buying a whole beef loin and throwing away the tenderloin. Use the zest! It has more true lemon flavour than any extract or flavour. Best thing for this is a microplane, but you can use a zester or even the old fashioned way, by rubbing a sugar cube over the skin. Just remember to use the coloured skin only, don't get any of the white pith, it's very bitter.

If you don't like the bits of peel in your food, You can strain them out. I make a killer lemon bar using only lemons, eggs, and sugar. Since eggs absorb odour, I mix the eggs, juice and zest, refrig. them overnight, then strain out the zest before completing.

The zest in all citrus fruits contains volatile oils, which give you a strong burst of flavour. Ever wonder why when you peel an orange, you smell like oranges even though you didn't pierce the fruit?

C