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Dessert

Oraxge Ice

A frozen dessert made from orange and lemon juice, sugar, water, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Oraxge Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Make a syrup by combining 1 pint of water and 1½ pounds of granulated sugar.

  2. Add enough cold water to make 3 quarts of mixture.

  3. Squeeze in the juice and most of the pulp of 6 oranges and 3 lemons, removing all seeds.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into a freezer.

  2. When it begins to freeze, stir in the well-beaten whites of 6 eggs.

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.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Granulated sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer.
Oranges
Provide the main citrus flavour and acidity, along with some juice body.
Lemons
Add sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Eggs
Egg whites, whipped into the partly frozen mixture, add airiness and a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg whites when the mixture begins to freeze. Whites added to a fully frozen mixture stay in lumps and do not blend in. Adding them at the first sign of freezing, while the mixture is still slushy, lets them distribute evenly and trap air for a lighter ice.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg. 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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