Name: Cherry Water Ice
Ingredients: ¼ pound preserved cherries; 2 lemons, juiced; ½ cup syrup; 1 pint water; a little cochineal

Why it works: Lemon and syrup 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 ↓

Cherry Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pound the preserved cherries in a mortar to break the stones.
In a bowl, combine the cherries, lemon juice, syrup, water, and cochineal.
Mix well and strain the mixture.

Freeze

Freeze the mixture until solid.

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.

Lemon + syruptop 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

Preserved cherries: Provide the main cherry flavour and colour base for the ice.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the cherry flavour.
Syrup: Sugar dissolves into the liquid, adding sweetness and softening the frozen texture.
Water: Forms the liquid base that freezes into the icy 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.