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Change Ice

A chilled fruit ice made from boiled sugar water, orange and lemon juice, then frozen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Change Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water for 30 minutes.

Combine and freeze

  1. Strain the juice of the oranges and lemons.

  2. Add the juice to the sugar and water mixture after it cools to lukewarm.

  3. Once cold, freeze the mixture.

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.

  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. 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

Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softly scoopable.
Orange juice
Provides the main flavor, sweetness and acidity of the ice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the citrus flavor and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool to lukewarm before adding the juice. Adding juice to a hot syrup can dull its fresh citrus flavor and vitamin-rich aroma through heat exposure. Cooling it first keeps the juice bright and makes the mixture easier to handle before freezing.

“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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