Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Ice

A chilled lemon and orange ice made by steeping lemon rind, mixing juices, and adding egg white before freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lemon 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 Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine hot water and sugar, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Add the lemon rind and steep until flavored.

Flavor, strain and freeze

  1. Stir in the lemon juice and orange juice.

  2. Add cold water and strain the mixture before freezing.

  3. When the mixture is about half frozen, stir in the beaten egg white.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon 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

Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer and less icy.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity and main citrus flavor.
Orange juice
Adds sweet citrus flavor that rounds out the lemon.
Egg white
Whipped into the partly frozen mix, it adds air and a lighter, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg white at half frozen. Beaten egg white folded into a partly frozen mixture traps air and keeps the texture light. Added when the mixture is fully liquid, it dilutes and sinks; when fully frozen, it cannot blend in evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg. 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.

More lemon ice recipes

Cream 95Orange 15Water 6Cream Candy 4 See all 131 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes