Name: Milk and Lime Water
Ingredients: 2 ounces lime water; 4 ounces fresh milk; or 4 ounces plain soda water; 15 grains bicarbonate of soda (optional)

Why it works: Lime and milk work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 700 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Milk and Lime Water

Ingredients

2 ounces lime water
4 ounces fresh milk
or 4 ounces plain soda water
15 grains bicarbonate of soda (optional)

Directions

Mix 2 ounces of lime water with 4 ounces of fresh milk or equal parts of plain soda water and stir well to combine.
For added preservation, dissolve 15 grains of bicarbonate of soda in a quart of fresh milk.

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.

Lime + milktop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together700 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lime water: Provides calcium hydroxide, a mild alkali that gives the mixture its distinctive character.
Fresh milk: Forms the main liquid base and supplies the milk proteins and fats.
Bicarbonate of soda: Raises alkalinity, which can help the milk stay stable and resist souring.

“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.