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Orange Frappe

A frozen orange drink made with orange, lemon, pineapple juice, sugar syrup, egg yolks, and yellow food coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Orange Frappe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 8 pounds of sugar in 1 pint of water until it forms a good syrup.

  2. Add enough yellow food coloring to achieve a yellow color.

  3. Let the syrup cool, then mix in the yolks of 6 eggs.

Freeze and serve

  1. Freeze the mixture until solid.

  2. Serve with yellow flowers like jonquils, butter cups, roses, pansies, or nasturtiums.

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. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Sugar
Dissolved in water to make the syrup, providing sweetness and body to the frozen mixture.
Yolks of eggs
Add richness and emulsifying power, giving the frozen dessert a smoother, creamier texture.
Orange juice
Provides the main flavor and acidity of the frappe.

The step that matters

Freezing until solid. Sugar syrup and egg yolks freeze slowly and form ice crystals, so the texture depends on how the mixture is cooled and frozen. Cooling the syrup fully before adding the yolks keeps the eggs from cooking.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar, egg. 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.

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