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Lemon Oil 101

What exactly is lemon oil? The package instructions say to use it in place of lemon zest.

What exactly is lemon oil? The package instructions say to use it in place of lemon zest.

Lemon oil is not lemon-infused oil, but rather highly aromatic oil that is pressed from lemon rinds; as such, it is used in recipes to replace lemon zest (and not juice). Lemon oil is much more potent than lemon extract, which is lemon oil diluted in alcohol.

We bought a few bottles of lemon oil and tried it out alongside fresh zest in the test kitchen’s Lemon Pound Cake (the recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of zest). Boyajian, the leading brand of lemon oil here in Massachusetts, doesn’t offer a conversion factor for zest to oil. After much trial and error, we found that ½ teaspoon of lemon oil provided the same lemony kick as 2 tablespoons of zest. We prepared our Roast Lemon Chicken using that same conversion; although a few tasters detected “something different” about the chicken made with oil, all found it acceptable.

At first glance, lemon oil seems pricey ($16.75 for a 5-ounce bottle). But at our conversion level of ½ teaspoon of oil for every 2 tablespoons of zest, each lemon’s worth of oil costs around 14 cents—a pretty good deal when you consider that lemons often sell for around a dollar. (Admittedly, with the bottle, you don’t get the juice.) A bottle of lemon oil should last a year in the refrigerator.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Lemon oil is extremely potent; we found that ¼ teaspoon of lemon oil is equivalent to 1 tablespoon of lemon zest in recipes. We’ll still be calling for fresh zest in our recipes, but lemon oil is an acceptable substitute.

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