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Dessert

Orange Water Icing

A simple icing made with icing sugar and orange juice, warmed slightly before use.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

Orange Water Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl.

  2. Add the orange juice and mix well.

  3. Warm slightly before using.

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. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Icing sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk that forms a smooth, pourable icing.
Orange juice
Liquid that dissolves the sugar into a thin icing and adds citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the orange juice. Icing sugar sets to a paste if too little liquid is used and turns runny if too much is added. Adding the juice gradually and mixing well gives a smooth, pourable consistency.

“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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