Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange-water Ice

A gelatin dessert made with orange juice, powdered sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Gelatin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Orange-water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Add gelatin to ½ cup of water and let it stand for 20 minutes.

  2. Stir in 2 cups of boiling water until dissolved.

  3. Add 4 ounces of powdered sugar, the juice of 6 oranges, and enough cold water to make 1 quart.

  4. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Freeze

  1. Pour into a freezing can and freeze.

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. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Gelatin + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

Gelatin
Sets with the liquid to give the frozen ice a firmer, smoother body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer when frozen.
Orange juice
Provides the main flavor and acidity of the ice.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully in boiling water. Gelatin only sets properly when fully dissolved. Undissolved granules leave a grainy, uneven texture after freezing, so the mixture should be stirred until clear before adding the other liquids.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gelatin, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes