Name: Orange Ice
Ingredients: 6 large oranges; 2 lemons; 2 ½ cups boiling water; loaf sugar, to taste

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

6 large oranges
2 lemons
2 ½ cups boiling water
loaf sugar, to taste

Directions

Prepare

Squeeze the juice from the oranges and lemons.
Pour the boiling water over the peels and pulp, and let it cool.

Make and freeze

Strain the mixture and add the orange and lemon juice.
Sweeten to taste with loaf sugar and freeze.

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

Oranges: Provide the main flavour and juice that forms the body of the ice.
Lemons: Add acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the orange flavour.
Loaf sugar: Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer.

“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.