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Dessert

Lemon Ice

A frozen lemon and orange syrup made by boiling water and sugar, adding rinds, juice, then straining and freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 quart of water and 3 cups of sugar for 5 minutes.

  2. Add grated rind of 3 lemons and 1 orange to the syrup.

Finish and freeze

  1. Cool the mixture.

  2. Add juice of 4 large lemons and 1 orange.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. 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.

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. 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
Dissolves into the boiled water to make a sweet syrup that gives the ice its sweetness and softens its freezing texture.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils and bright flavour to the syrup as it steeps while hot.
Lemon juice
Provides sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the ice its characteristic tang.
Orange
Adds rind oils and juice that give a mellower citrus aroma and sweetness alongside the lemon.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the juice. Cooling the hot syrup before adding fresh juice keeps the juice's bright flavour and aroma from fading with heat. Straining after the juice goes in removes pulp and rind bits so the frozen ice is smooth.

“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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