Name: Love Ice
Ingredients: juice of 8 lemons; peel of 2 lemons; 2 oranges; 2 cedrats; 1 ounce cinnamon water; a little powdered vanilla; 2 ounces orange water; 1½ cups water; 24 ounces sugar (in syrup)

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 ↓

Love Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Infuse the juice of the lemons, lemon peel, oranges, cedrats, cinnamon water, powdered vanilla, and orange water in the water for 2 hours.
Pass the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and freeze

Add the sugar syrup and mix well.
Color the mixture if desired, then freeze it.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,287 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,371 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice: Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar: Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer when frozen.
Orange water: Adds a floral citrus aroma to the mixture.
Cinnamon water: Adds warm spiced aroma to the mixture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, cinnamon, vanilla, sugar, syrup):

Figfits better
Blueberryfits better
Peachfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, cinnamon, vanilla, sugar, syrup. 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.