Name: Orangeade , or Lemonade
Ingredients: Juice of 2 oranges or lemons; Boiling water; Peel of 1 orange or lemon; Sugar; Additional 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 Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Squeeze the juice from the oranges or lemons.
Pour boiling water over the peel and cover tightly.
Boil water with sugar to create a thin syrup and skim it.

Combine and strain

Once everything is cold, mix the juice, the infusion, and the syrup.
Add more water to achieve a rich sherbet consistency.
Strain through a jelly bag.

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 or lemons: Provide the juice and acidity that give the drink its flavour.
Peel: Infuses aromatic oils into the water, adding fragrance and bitterness.
Sugar: Sweetens the syrup and balances the sourness of the citrus 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.