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 ↓
Lemonade That Has the Flavour and Appearance of Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Prepare the infusion
Pare the oranges and lemons as thin as possible.
Steep them in hot water for 4 hours.
Make the syrup
Boil the sugar in water to make a syrup.
Skim the syrup.
Combine and finish
Combine the syrup with the infused water and the juice of the oranges and lemons. Stir well.
Strain through a jelly bag until clear.
Add orange water and more sugar to taste, if desired.
Bottle and cork for storage.
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.
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Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Seville oranges
- Peel supplies aromatic oils and bitterness that flavour the infused water.
- Lemons
- Juice and peel add sharp acidity and citrus aroma to the drink.
- Loaf sugar
- Dissolves into the water to provide sweetness and body, balancing the acidity.
The step that matters
Straining through a jelly bag until clear. Fine peel fragments and pulp left in the liquid make it cloudy and can keep releasing bitterness. Letting the liquid drip slowly through the bag, without squeezing, gives a clearer result.
“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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