Name: Orange Sauce
Ingredients: three tablespoonfuls sugar; two-thirds cupful orange juice; two tablespoonfuls lemon juice; one-fourth teaspoonful salt; six tablespoonfuls; two oranges; lemon juice; salt; cayenne

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

Beat currant jelly with a silver fork and measure out six tablespoonfuls.
Add three tablespoonfuls sugar and the grated rind of two oranges to the jelly, then stir until well mixed and let stand five minutes.

Finish the sauce

Add two-thirds cupful orange juice, two tablespoonfuls lemon juice, one-fourth teaspoonful salt, and one-eighth teaspoonful cayenne.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

129Calories

2 gProtein

1 gFat

32 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 5 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Orange	1 medium (131g)	62
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Lemon	juice of 1 lemon (48ml)	12
Cayenne	1 tsp (1.8g)	6
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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

Currant jelly (in the method): Provides the base body and sweetness that the sauce is built on.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the tart citrus juices.
Orange juice: Adds liquid and orange flavor, thinning the jelly into a sauce.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts the sweetness.

“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.