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Lemon Water Ice

A frozen citrus beverage made from lemons, orange, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Lemon Water Ice

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

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water together for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove the yellow rind from 2 lemons and the orange, then add to the boiling mixture.

Cool and freeze

  1. Let the mixture cool.

  2. Add the juice of the lemons and orange.

  3. Freeze the 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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
Juice supplies sharp acidity, and the rind adds fragrant citrus oils.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and lowers the freezing point so it stays softer when frozen.
Orange
Adds sweet citrus juice and aromatic oils from its rind.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the juice. Fresh citrus juice holds its bright flavor best when added to a cooled syrup. Heat can dull its volatile aromas, so cooling first keeps the lemonade tasting fresh.

“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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