Name: Orange Ice
Ingredients: 1 pint orange juice; Grated rind of 1 lemon; 1 quart water; ½ pint lemon juice; 1 pint sugar; Grated rind of 1 orange

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Make a syrup by boiling the sugar and water for 15 minutes.
Remove from heat and add the orange juice, lemon juice, orange rind, and lemon rind.

Freeze and serve

Freeze the mixture according to your freezer's instructions.
Serve in glasses.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Sugar: Dissolves into the water to form a syrup that sweetens the ice and keeps it smooth.
Orange juice: Provides the main orange flavour and liquid base for the ice.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the citrus flavour.
Orange rind: Adds aromatic oils that deepen the orange flavour.

“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.