Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Transparent Icing, Flavored with Orange-flowers
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the sugar until it is white.
Dilute the boiled sugar with the double orange-flower water.
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.
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Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and orange 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
- Sweetens the icing and, once boiled, sets into a thick syrup that gives body.
- Double orange-flower water
- Thins the boiled sugar and adds a strong orange-blossom aroma.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar until white. Sugar boiled too far darkens and caramelises, changing the flavour and colour. Stopping at white keeps the icing pale and mild, and the syrup is thick enough to coat without turning brittle.
“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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