Why it works: Lime and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 937 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Limes in Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Wash the limes in cold, running water for 2 hours.
Blanch the limes in boiling water for a few minutes.
Drain the limes and reboil them in water with food coloring.
Cool the limes in cold water.
Place the limes in stone jars and cover with hot syrup at 18° Beaume.
Drain the syrup daily, reboiling and increasing its strength by 1 degree until it reaches 24°.
After reaching 24°, drain every 2 days until the syrup reaches 26°.
Put the limes in cans or jars and cover with hot syrup at 26°.
Seal and process the jars: quart cans for 19 minutes, pint cans for 7 minutes, quart jars for 8 minutes, and pint jars for 6 minutes in boiling water.
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.
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Lime + orangetop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together937 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,842 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Syrup + orangetop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,179 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Lime + syruptop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together322 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Swap the lime
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup, orange):
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonfits better
- Figfits better
- Limethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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