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Drink

Grape Water Ice

A frozen beverage made from elder flowers, water, syrup, lemon juice, ice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,235 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Grape Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Boil 1 pint of water.

  2. Pour the boiled water over the elder flowers in a pot and cover the pot tightly.

Make the ice

  1. After steeping, drain the water from the flowers.

  2. Add the syrup and lemon juice to the drained water and mix well.

  3. Freeze the mixture until solid.

Shape and serve

  1. Shape the frozen mixture like a bunch of grapes.

  2. Cover the mold with a half sheet of paper.

  3. Place the mold in ice and salt for 1 hour before serving.

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. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Elder flowers
Provide the main floral aroma and flavor of the water ice.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and softens the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Place the mold in ice and salt. Salt lowers the melting point of the ice, creating a colder bath that firms the mixture so it holds its shape when unmolded.

“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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