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Dessert

Orange Ice

A chilled dessert made from orange juice, lemon juice, zest, sugar, water, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Orange 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 Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Juice the oranges and lemon, and zest them.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling the water with sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add the juice and zest to the syrup.

Freeze and whip

  1. Freeze the mixture until firm.

  2. When nearly firm, add the beaten egg white and beat until light and 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. Orange + lemontop 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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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 dissolves into the water to make the syrup.
Oranges
Supply the juice for flavour and acidity, and the zest for aroma.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the orange flavour.
Egg white (in the method)
Traps air when beaten, making the frozen mixture lighter and less dense.

The step that matters

Adding the egg white when nearly firm. If the mixture is fully frozen, the beaten white cannot blend in evenly; if it is still liquid, the white deflates and the ice stays dense. Beating it in while partly frozen holds the air and gives a light 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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