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Dessert

Orange Water Ice

A frozen dessert made from orange peel, syrup, orange juice, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

  1. Rub the peel of the oranges on a piece of rough loaf sugar.

  2. Scrape the peel into a pint of syrup.

  3. Add the pint of orange juice and the juice of two lemons.

  4. Mix well and freeze as you would for Lemon Water Ice.

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. Syrup + lemontop 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

Oranges
Their peel, rubbed onto sugar, releases aromatic oils that give the ice its orange fragrance and flavour.
Syrup
Dissolved sugar adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice soft rather than rock hard.
Orange juice
Provides the main liquid and fresh orange flavour, with some sugar and acid balancing the taste.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that sharpens the sweetness and brightens the orange flavour.

The step that matters

Mix well before freezing. Sugar and acid are dissolved throughout the liquid, and the citrus oil from the peel must be evenly distributed. Thorough mixing ensures every portion freezes with the same sweetness and flavour, rather than uneven pockets.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, lemon. 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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