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Essence Op Orange Lemonade

A citrus-flavored lemonade made with orange oil, citric acid, and proof spirit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and spirit work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 171 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Essence Op Orange Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the essence

  1. Make a solution of the oil of sweet orange, citric acid, and proof spirit.

  2. Store the solution in a cool, dark place for a few days.

  3. Filter the solution.

Make the lemonade

  1. Add 1 teaspoon of the essence to ½ pint of water.

  2. Sweeten to taste.

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 + spirittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

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

  2. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  3. Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Oil of sweet orange
Provides the main orange aroma and flavour.
Citric acid
Adds sourness that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Proof spirit
Dissolves the orange oil so it can mix evenly into the water.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, added to taste.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spirit, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against spirit, sugar. 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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