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Drink

Orange Water Ice

A frozen beverage made from orange zest, orange juice, lemon juice, water, clarified sugar, and optional warm jelly.

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

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 Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mix

  1. Zest the oranges and juice them.

  2. Combine the orange zest, orange juice, water, lemon juice, and clarified sugar in a bowl.

  3. Mix well and strain the mixture.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture until solid.

  2. For variation, use the same number of oranges as lemons and rasp one-half of the oranges, avoiding excessive rubbing to prevent bitterness.

  3. Add warm jelly if desired, then strain and freeze.

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. Orange + lemontop 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

Oranges
Provide the main flavour and most of the liquid base for the ice.
Clarified sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer and scoopable.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the orange flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Rasp the oranges gently. Rasping releases zest oil and bitter pith compounds. Excessive rubbing pulls in more of the bitter white pith, which can make the finished ice taste harsh.

“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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