Name: Orangeade
Ingredients: 3 oranges (thin rind); 12 ounces sugar; 1 pint water; 12 oranges (juice); 3 pints spring 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

Steep the thin rind of 3 oranges in 1 pint of syrup made with 12 ounces of sugar and 1 pint of water.

Assemble and chill

Squeeze the juice of 12 oranges through a clean sieve into a jug.
Add the syrup and 3 pints of spring water, then mix well.
Cool in ice for 1 hour.
Decant into cut-glass bottles or jugs and serve in large claret glasses.

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

Oranges: Supply the juice and aromatic oil from the rind, giving the drink its flavour and tartness.
Sugar: Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the orange juice.

“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.