Skip to main content
Drink

Seville Orange Water Ice

A frozen drink made from Seville orange rind, lemon juice, syrup, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Seville Orange Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Remove the rind from the Seville oranges very finely.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the oranges into a bowl with the lemon juice.

  3. Add the syrup and water to the bowl.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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

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

  2. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Orange + syruptop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,179 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Seville orange rind
Supplies the aromatic citrus oils that give the ice its characteristic bitter-orange flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the citrus flavour and balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer rather than rock-hard.
Water
Forms the bulk of the liquid that freezes into the ice's texture.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, syrup):

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, syrup. 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.

You might also like