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Dessert

Orange-water Ice

A chilled dessert made from orange juice, lemon juice, syrup, and orange rind, frozen into ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 juice

  1. Squeeze the juice from the oranges through a sieve into a basin.

  2. Add the juice of 1 or 2 lemons.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, heat 1½ cups of syrup with the thin rind of 1 orange until it reduces to about 1 cup.

Mix and freeze

  1. Mix the syrup with the orange juice, passing it through the sieve 2 or 3 times.

  2. Pour the mixture into a freezing pot and freeze as directed for other ices.

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.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Orange + syruptop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,179 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

China oranges
Provide the main juice, giving the ice its base flavour and liquid.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup and orange juice.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and, once frozen, keeps the ice soft rather than rock-hard.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, syrup):

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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.

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