Why it works: Lime and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,658 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Lime Water
Ingredients
Directions
Make the lime water
Place the slaked lime in a wine bottle.
Fill the bottle with water and cork it tightly.
Shake the bottle and let it stand overnight.
Use and refill
Pour off the lime water as needed without shaking the bottle.
You can refill the bottle with water as long as there is undissolved lime.
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 + eggtop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,658 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Slaked lime
- Dissolves slightly in water to form a clear, mildly alkaline solution used as the active liquid.
The step that matters
Pour off without shaking. Shaking stirs up undissolved lime particles, which cloud the solution. Letting them settle keeps the lime water clear for use.
“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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