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A frozen fruit dessert made with lemon and orange juice, sugar, peaches, bananas, water, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ices

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine lemon juice, cold water, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Pack the mixture in a freezer.

Freeze and serve

  1. Once it begins to freeze, add orange juice, sieved bananas, and sieved peaches or pineapple.

  2. Continue freezing until very hard.

  3. Pack and serve.

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.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Peach + bananatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Orange + peachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and liquid that freezes into the ice's body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer.
Bananas
Sieved, they add body, sweetness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Peaches
Sieved, they add fruit flavour, sweetness and body to the ice.

The step that matters

Add the fruit once the mixture begins to freeze. Adding the juices and sieved fruit only after ice crystals start to form lets them mix evenly through the partly frozen base. Added too early, they can dilute the mixture and slow freezing; added too late, they stay in lumps and the texture turns uneven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, peach, banana, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, peach, banana, cream. 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.

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