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 ↓
Mille Fruit Iced Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the flavourings
Strain the juice of the lemons and grate the peel of one.
Mince the orange marmalade, dried cherries, and preserved angelica finely.
Make the ice cream
Add the minced mixture to the simple syrup and mix with the cream.
Drop in a few drops of prepared cochineal.
Pour the mixture into a mold and freeze it.
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.
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Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together189 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Orange + angelicatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together159 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,964 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Angelica + creamtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together237 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cream
- Provides fat and richness, giving the frozen mixture a smooth, creamy texture.
- Simple syrup
- Adds sweetness and softens the freezing, keeping the ice cream from becoming too hard.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
- Orange marmalade
- Adds sweetness, citrus aroma and body from its fruit and peel.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, angelica, syrup, cream):
- Vanillafits about as well
- Orangethe original
- Limefits less well
- Raspberryfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, angelica, syrup, cream. 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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