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Orange Water Ice

A chilled beverage made from boiled water, sugar, orange and lemon juice, and a loaf sugar rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Orange Water 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 ↓

Orange Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water and sugar for 10-12 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool.

Prepare the juice

  1. Squeeze juice from oranges.

  2. Squeeze juice from lemons.

  3. Strain the juice.

Flavour and freeze

  1. Rub a lump of loaf sugar on the rind of an orange.

  2. Add the rubbed rind to the mixture.

  3. Pour in the sugar and water mixture.

  4. 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.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the ice softer by lowering its freezing point.
Orange juice
Provides the main flavour and some sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour.
Water
Forms the bulk of the liquid that freezes into the ice.
Loaf sugar
Rubbed on the orange rind to lift its aromatic oils into the sugar.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool fully before adding the juice. Hot syrup would warm the fresh juice and dull its bright flavour, and cooling it first keeps the sugar and water balance steady for an even freeze.

“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.

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