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Drink

Lemon-water Ice

A chilled beverage made from lemon rind, lemon juice, orange juice, clarified sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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-water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the rind of 2 lemons on some lumps of sugar.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the juice of 6 lemons and 1 orange, 1 pint of clarified sugar, and ½ pint of water.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the strained mixture.

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. 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 citrus aroma, with rind oils flavouring the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer and scoopable.
Orange juice
Adds extra citrus juice and a gentler sweetness to balance the lemon's sharpness.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a fine sieve. Straining removes pulp, seeds and rind bits so the ice freezes smooth rather than gritty. Fine sieving gives a clear, even texture.

“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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