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Strawberry Water Ice

A chilled strawberry dessert made by mashing berries, sieving, sweetening, and freezing into a smooth ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Strawberry Water Ice

Why it works: Lemon and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,206 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Strawberry Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Pick over the strawberries.

  2. Clean the strawberries.

  3. Mash the strawberries in a basin with a wooden spoon.

  4. Add lemon juice.

  5. Sweeten with syrup to match the amount of strawberry juice. Mix well.

Freeze and serve

  1. Place in a freezing pot.

  2. Work the mixture until smooth and creamy.

  3. If it doesn't freeze sufficiently, add a drop of water.

  4. Serve in molds or as a rough ice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + strawberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,206 recipes

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

  2. Syrup + strawberrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. 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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavor, color and bulk of the sorbet base.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and softens the ice so the sorbet stays scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor.

The step that matters

Working the mixture until smooth and creamy. Stirring or working the mixture while it freezes breaks up forming ice crystals, giving a smooth texture instead of a coarse, icy one. Sugar content also affects how firmly it freezes, which is why the record notes adding water only if it does not freeze sufficiently.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, strawberry. 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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