Skip to main content
Drink

Orange Water Ice

A chilled beverage made from water, orange juice, sugar, and citrus rinds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Orange Water Ice

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 Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine 1 quart of water with the juice of 3 or more oranges.

  2. Add 1 pound of sugar, the grated rind of 1 orange, and the grated rind of ½ lemon.

  3. For every 4 quarts of water, include the juice of 1 lemon.

Freeze

  1. Strain the mixture carefully into an ice cream maker.

  2. Freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions for ice cream.

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. 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. Orange + sugartop 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

Oranges
Provide the main juice, flavour and natural sweetness of the water ice.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice softer and scoopable.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the orange flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture carefully into an ice cream maker. Straining removes pulp, seeds and rind bits that would otherwise freeze into hard, gritty pieces and spoil the smooth texture of the water ice.

“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.

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipes