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Water Ices

A chilled, sweetened water mixture flavored with fruit juice, frozen into a slushy consistency.

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

Why it works: Raspberry and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Water Ices

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine water and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Heat until sugar dissolves completely.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

Freeze and serve

  1. Add fruit juice of your choice and mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a shallow container and freeze for several hours, stirring every 30 minutes until it reaches a slushy consistency.

  3. Serve in bowls or cups.

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. Raspberry + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Peach + cherrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together177 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Raspberry + strawberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Peach + strawberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the water to sweeten the ice and lowers its freezing point for a softer texture.
Fruit juice
Adds flavour, acidity and sweetness, and its sugars further lower the freezing point.

The step that matters

Stirring during freezing. Stirring every 30 minutes breaks up ice crystals as they form, keeping the texture slushy and fine rather than a solid frozen block.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raspberry, peach, orange, grape, cherry, strawberry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raspberry, peach, orange, grape, cherry, 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.

More water ice recipes

Lemon 46Orange 44Pineapple 24Cherry 23Raspberry 21Strawberry 20 See all 20 →

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