Name: Lemon Water Ice
Ingredients: 8 lemons; 2 oranges; 1½ quarts clarified sugar; water

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 Water Ice

Ingredients

8 lemons
2 oranges
1½ quarts clarified sugar
water

Directions

Make the syrup

Rasp the rinds of 4 lemons into the sugar before boiling.
Boil the sugar with water to make clarified sugar.

Finish and freeze

Add the juice of the lemons and oranges to the mixture.
Strain the mixture and 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.

Lemon + orangetop 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

Lemons: Provide sharp acidity, fragrant oils from the rinds, and fresh juice.
Oranges: Add juice that softens the sharpness and gives a rounder, fruity flavour.
Clarified sugar: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice smooth and scoopable.

“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.