Name: Orange and Lemonade
Ingredients: 3 China oranges; 1 large lemon; 3 ounces sugar; 1 quart boiling water

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Orange and Lemonade

Ingredients

3 China oranges
1 large lemon
3 ounces sugar
1 quart boiling water

Directions

Prepare

Rub the rind of the lemon and some of the orange with the sugar.

Make the lemonade

Put the sugar in a jug with the strained juice of the fruit.
Pour on 1 quart of boiling water.
When cold, strain through muslin.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar: Sweetens the drink and, rubbed into the rind, draws out aromatic citrus oils.
Oranges: Supply sweet citrus flavour, juice and aromatic oil from the rind.
Lemon: Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the sugar.

“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.