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Orange Water Ice

A chilled beverage made from boiled water, sugar, orange and lemon juice, and loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Orange Water Ice

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 Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water and sugar together for 10-12 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool.

Prepare the juice

  1. Squeeze juice from oranges and lemons, then strain.

  2. Rub a lump of loaf sugar in the rind of an orange and add to the mixture.

Freeze

  1. Pour in the sugar and water mixture, then 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.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer and scoopable.
Water
Forms the icy base that freezes into the body of the water ice.
Oranges
Provide the main juice, flavor, and sweetness-balancing acidity.
Lemons
Add sharp acidity that brightens the orange flavor and balances sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup for the full time. Dissolving the sugar fully in boiling water creates a syrup that is evenly sweet. Undissolved sugar can leave grainy texture, and sugar concentration controls how soft the frozen ice is.

“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.

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