Name: Flavored Icings
Ingredients: plain icing; boiled icing; lemon extract; orange extract; vanilla extract; rose extract

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 ↓

Flavored Icings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare either plain icing or boiled icing.
Add your desired flavoring: lemon, orange, vanilla, or rose extract.
Mix well until the flavor is evenly distributed.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,371 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + rosetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together876 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,174 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Vanilla + rosetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together456 recipes

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