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Drink

Lemon Ice

A frozen lemon and orange drink made by steeping citrus peels in juice, sweetening with sugar and water, then freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lemon Ice

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 ↓

Lemon Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Juice the lemons and oranges.

  2. Grate the peels of the lemons and both oranges.

  3. Steep the grated peels in the juice for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Sweeten and freeze

  1. Mix in the sugar and water. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemons
Provide the main acidic juice and aromatic peel that flavour the drink.
Oranges
Add sweet citrus juice and fragrant peel that round out the lemon's sharpness.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and softens the texture of the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Steep the grated peels in the juice for 1 hour. Citrus peel holds aromatic oils that release into the juice over time, so steeping gives the flavour its depth. Skipping or shortening the steep leaves the drink tasting flatter.

“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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