Name: Orange Ade
Ingredients: 1 orange, juiced; ⅓ cup syrup; 2 tablespoons crushed ice; 1 cup water; ½ cup sugar

Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Orange Ade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup by boiling 1 cup of water and ½ cup of sugar for 8 minutes.
Mix the orange juice with the syrup.
Pour the mixture over the crushed ice.

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.

Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + syruptop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,179 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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: Dissolves into the water to make the syrup, adding sweetness that balances the orange juice's acidity.
Orange juice: Supplies the main flavour and acidity of the drink.