Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange and Lemon Ices

A frozen dessert made from orange rind, water, sugar, orange or lemon juice, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange and Lemon Ices

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavored syrup

  1. Grate the rind of 3 oranges and steep it in just over 1 pint of water for a few moments.

  2. Strain the mixture to obtain 1 pint of flavored water and combine it with 1 pound of sugar.

  3. Add 1 pint of orange or lemon juice to the mixture.

Freeze and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a freezer and freeze until half-frozen.

  2. Beat the whites of 4 eggs to a stiff froth and fold them into the partially frozen 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.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Orange and sugar 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

Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer.
Orange or lemon juice
Provides the main citrus flavor and acidity.
Whites of 4 eggs
Whipped to a stiff froth, they add air and a light, airy texture.
Orange rind
Steeped in water to release aromatic citrus oils into the base.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten to a stiff froth and folded gently into the partly frozen mixture. Overmixing or deflating them loses the trapped air, which is what makes the ice light rather than dense.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

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