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 ↓
Recipe for Making Lime Water
Ingredients
Directions
Place the lime in a basin and sprinkle cold water over it to slake.
Transfer the slaked lime into a clean bottle.
Fill the bottle with water and cork it.
Shake well and let it stand for 24 hours.
After 24 hours, pour off the clear liquid, being careful not to shake the bottle.
As long as there is undissolved lime at the bottom, you can refill the bottle with water.
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
- Freshly burnt lime
- Slaked with water to form calcium hydroxide, which dissolves slightly to make the clear solution.
The step that matters
Pour off the liquid without shaking. Lime is only slightly soluble, so the solid settles at the bottom. Shaking stirs up undissolved particles and cloudies the clear liquid you want to pour off.
“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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