Name: Orange Dessert
Ingredients: 6 oranges; ½ pint water; 2 lemons; 1 cup granulated sugar; 1 cup claret or other wine

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 Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the oranges in half crosswise and remove all the pulp, placing it in a glass dish.

Make the syrup

In a pot, combine the juice from the oranges, ½ pint of water, the juice of 2 lemons, 1 cup of granulated sugar, and 1 cup of claret.
Bring the mixture to a boil while stirring, then allow it to cool.

Assemble and serve

Strain the cooled mixture over the orange pulp in the glass dish.
Serve with sponge cake.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

Oranges: Provide the fruit pulp and juice that form the body of the dessert.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus and wine.
Lemons: Add acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Claret or other wine: Adds depth and aroma to the syrup while contributing 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.