Name: Orange Water
Ingredients: 3 oranges; 1 lemon; 1 pint cold water; Capillaire syrup or saccharine to taste; a small piece of 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

Ingredients

Directions

Juice the 3 oranges and 1 lemon into a bowl.
Mix the juices with 1 pint of cold water.
Sweeten with capillaire syrup or saccharine.
Add a small piece of ice before serving.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,235 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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

Oranges: Provide the main juice, flavour and natural sweetness-balancing acidity for the drink.
Lemon: Adds sharp acidity that brightens the citrus flavour and balances the sweetener.
Capillaire syrup: Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the citrus juice.