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Lemon and Orange Juice

A fermented citrus beverage made from lemon and orange pulp, rye straw, and albumen water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Lemon and Orange Juice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 190°F (88°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut up the pulp of the lemons and oranges.

  2. Mix the pulp with chopped rye straw.

  3. Press the mixture to extract juice.

Ferment

  1. Ferment the juice in a cool place for six days.

Clarify and bottle

  1. Heat the juice to 190°F (88°C) to clarify.

  2. Add 2% albumen water and stir well.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Skim off any foam.

  5. Bottle the clarified juice in stone jars.

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.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + ryetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Lemon + ryetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemon pulp
Provides the main acidity and bright citrus flavour of the juice.
Orange pulp
Adds juice, natural sweetness and aroma to the blend.
Albumen water
Egg white proteins coagulate when heated, trapping cloudy particles so they rise as foam to skim off.

The step that matters

Heat the juice to 190°F (88°C) to clarify. Albumen proteins set when heated and gather suspended particles into foam. Heating too little leaves the juice cloudy, and skimming only works once the foam has formed.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, rye):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, rye. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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