Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Ice

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lemon Ice

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Lemon Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Juice the lemons and orange, and grate the peel of three lemons and the orange.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar with the water until dissolved.

  3. Add the lemon and orange juice to the sugar mixture.

Finish and freeze

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker, stirring occasionally.

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.

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.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 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. Orange + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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

Sugar
Sweetens the base and dissolves into the water to balance the citrus acidity.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add airy lightness to the frozen texture.
Lemons
Provide the main sour flavour and aroma from their juice and grated peel.
Orange
Adds extra juice, sweetness and aromatic citrus oils from the rind.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks so they hold air. Folding them gently preserves that air, which keeps the frozen ice cream light rather than dense.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

More lemon ice cream recipes

Candy 4 See all 95 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes