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Drink

Iced Lemon

A chilled beverage made with lemon juice, syrup, orange juice, rinds, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Iced Lemon

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. Mix lemon juice and syrup in a bowl.

  2. Add orange juice, grated lemon and orange rinds, and rum.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into a freezer.

  2. Stir while freezing until frothy but not hard.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

  3. Syrup + rumtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweet syrup.
Syrup
Provides sweetness and, with the rum, keeps the mixture from freezing rock hard.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness, acidity and fruity body.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol keeps the lemonade softer when frozen.

The step that matters

Stir while freezing until frothy but not hard.. Stirring breaks up ice crystals as they form, giving a smooth, airy texture instead of a solid block. Sugar and alcohol lower the freezing point, so the mixture stays slushy, and it should be served before it sets firm.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, orange, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, orange, rum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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