Name: Sunset Lemonade
Ingredients: 1 pint red-ripe berries (strawberries preferred); 3 large oranges, sliced; 6 lemons, peeled and sliced thin; ½ pound sugar; 1 quart crushed ice

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 ↓

Sunset Lemonade

Ingredients

1 pint red-ripe berries (strawberries preferred)
3 large oranges, sliced
6 lemons, peeled and sliced thin
½ pound sugar
1 quart crushed ice

Directions

Make the base

Combine the berries and sugar in a quart pitcher, stirring until smooth.
Roll two lemons until soft, then grate the rind and squeeze out the juice.
Grate the rind of one whole orange.

Layer and chill

Layer crushed ice in a serving container, then add sliced lemons on top of the ice.
Add another layer of crushed ice, then sliced oranges on top.
Finish with a final layer of ice.
Refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Strawberries: Provide the main fruit flavor, color and natural sweetness of the drink.
Sugar: Sweetens the drink and helps draw juice from the berries when stirred in.
Lemons: Add sharp acidity and citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.
Oranges: Add mellow citrus sweetness and aroma from the slices and rind.

“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.