Name: Orange Frosting
Ingredients: 1 pound frosting sugar; juice of 1 lemon; juice of 1 orange; grated rind of 1 orange

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 ↓

Orange Frosting

Ingredients

1 pound frosting sugar
juice of 1 lemon
juice of 1 orange
grated rind of 1 orange

Directions

Combine the frosting sugar with the juice of the lemon and orange in a bowl.
Add the grated rind of the orange and mix until smooth and spreadable.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 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

Frosting sugar: Dissolves into the juice to form the sweet, thick body of the frosting.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar.
Orange juice: Adds liquid to dissolve the sugar and gives the frosting its citrus flavour.
Orange rind: Contributes aromatic oils that give concentrated orange flavour.

“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.