Skip to main content
Dessert

Alberta Peach Ice

A frozen dessert made from peaches, sugar, lemon juice, and bitter almond essence, set in ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Peach and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Alberta Peach Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Remove the fuzz from the peaches and boil them in 1 cup of water until tender.

  2. Drain the peaches and rub them through a fine sieve to create a pulp.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the hot peach water, sugar, 1 cup of water, lemon juice, and bitter almond essence.

  2. Boil until it forms a syrup.

  3. Pour the syrup over the strained peach pulp, stir well, and add a drop of carmine for color.

Freeze and serve

  1. Fill a mold with the mixture, pack it in ice, and freeze until solid.

  2. When ready to serve, decorate with foliage.

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. Peach + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the main flavour and pulp that gives the ice its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the peach flavour.

The step that matters

Freezing the mixture in ice. The mixture must freeze solid evenly. Packing the mold well in ice and salt-free ice takes time, and sugar lowers the freezing point, so the ice may stay soft if not left long enough.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar, syrup, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, syrup, almond. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes