Name: Orangeade or Sherbet
Ingredients: Juice of 4 oranges; Thin peel of 1 orange; 4 ounces lump sugar; 3 pints boiling water

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 ↓

Orangeade or Sherbet

Ingredients

Juice of 4 oranges
Thin peel of 1 orange
4 ounces lump sugar
3 pints boiling water

Directions

Juice the oranges and set the juice aside.
Add the thin peel of one orange to a pot.
Dissolve the lump sugar in the boiling water.
Combine the orange juice with the sugar water and stir well.
Let it cool, then strain and serve chilled.

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.

Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Orange juice: Provides the main citrus flavour and tartness that give the drink its character.
Lump sugar: Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the orange juice.
Orange peel: Adds aromatic oils from the skin, deepening the orange flavour.

“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.