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Dessert

Millefruit Water Ice

A chilled dessert made from lemon juice, syrup, water, preserved peel, angelica, and cochineal, formed into ice with veins.

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 ↓

Millefruit Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Squeeze the lemons into a bowl.

  2. Add the syrup and water, then freeze until rich.

  3. Cut the preserved orange and lemon peel, and angelica into small pieces.

Freeze and set

  1. Mix the pieces into the ice when it is soft like butter.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve before freezing.

  3. Add a little cochineal for color, creating veins in the ice.

  4. Transfer the mixture into molds before it fully freezes.

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. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Orange + angelicatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Syrup + angelicatop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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

Lemons
Provide the sharp acidity and fresh citrus flavour that balance the sweet syrup.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer and smoother.
Preserved orange peel
Adds concentrated citrus aroma and bitter-sweet flavour through the ice.
Preserved lemon peel
Adds concentrated lemon aroma and a tangy flavour through the ice.

The step that matters

Mix the pieces in when the ice is soft like butter. If the ice is too firm, the cut peel and angelica will not distribute evenly; if it is too liquid, the pieces sink and settle at the bottom. A soft, partly frozen texture holds them suspended throughout.

Swap the angelica

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, syrup, orange):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, syrup, orange. 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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