Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Fresh Strawberry Water Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the strawberries
Remove the stalks from the strawberries.
Pass the strawberries through a sieve.
Make and freeze the ice
Mix in the powdered sugar and water.
Pass the mixture again.
Freeze until rich.
If it does not freeze rich, add some syrup.
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.
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Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,842 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
- Strawberries
- Provide the main flavour and colour, and their pulp gives the ice body.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer when frozen.
- Water
- Dilutes the fruit pulp so the mixture can freeze into an icy texture.
The step that matters
Freeze until rich. Sugar and water set the texture, so the mixture must be frozen until it is thick and rich rather than left as a thin, icy liquid. If it does not firm up, the added syrup corrects the sweetness and softness.
“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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