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Dessert

Lemon Ice

A frozen lemon and orange beverage made by steeping citrus rind, mixing with sugar and water, then freezing and stirring.

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

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 ↓

Lemon Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons and the orange.

  2. Steep the grated rind of the lemons and orange in the juice for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture, squeezing the bag dry.

Make and freeze the ice

  1. Mix in the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add the water and stir well.

  3. Freeze the mixture in a freezer, opening it 3 times to beat it together.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. 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

Lemons
Provide the main acidity and bright lemon flavour of the ice.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer.
Sweet orange
Adds sweetness and aroma that softens the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Freezing and beating during freezing. Stirring the partly frozen mixture breaks up large ice crystals, giving a smoother texture. Opening the freezer three times to beat it helps achieve this.

“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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