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Dessert

Black Currant Water Ice

A frozen dessert made with black currant jelly, lemon juice, syrup, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and lemon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Black Currant Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the black currant jelly into a bowl.

  2. Squeeze in the juice of two lemons.

  3. Add ½ cup of syrup and ½ pint of water.

  4. Mix well and freeze 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.

  1. Black currant + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Black currant + syruptop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 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

Black currant jelly
Provides the main fruit flavour, colour and sweetness in the ice.
Lemons
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and, by lowering the freezing point, keeps the ice softer.

The step that matters

Mix well before freezing. The jelly, juice, syrup and water must be fully combined so the sweetness and acidity are even throughout. Unmixed pockets would freeze with uneven flavour.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, syrup. 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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