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 Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Make a clarified syrup with the loaf sugar.
Rub the orange zest on pieces of loaf sugar and scrape it off.
Allow the orange zest sugar to steep in the syrup for 6 hours.
Add the strained orange juice and lemon juice to the syrup and stir well.
Bottle and process
Fill pint bottles with the syrup, cork them, and secure with wire or string.
Place the bottles in cold water and bring to a gentle boil for 6 minutes.
Let the bottles cool completely.
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.
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Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Loaf sugar
- Forms the syrup base and provides the sweetness.
- Orange zest
- Adds aromatic oil and bright orange flavour to the syrup.
- Strained orange juice
- Adds liquid, acidity and fresh orange flavour.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the flavour.
The step that matters
Steep the zest in the syrup. Orange zest holds fragrant oils in its outer peel. Rubbing it onto sugar first lifts these oils into the sugar, and steeping lets them dissolve into the warm syrup. Too short a steep leaves the flavour weak.
“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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