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Dessert

Pineapple Water Ice and Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from pineapple, lemon juice, sugar syrup, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Water Ice and Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare and core the fresh pineapples, then cut them into small pieces.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water together for a few minutes.

Combine, strain and freeze

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the crushed pineapple and lemon juice.

  2. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth.

  3. Once cold, freeze the mixture.

  4. For sherbet, add a meringue before freezing.

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. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Supplies the main fruit flavor and most of the body of the sorbet.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen mixture softer by limiting hard ice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the pineapple flavor.

The step that matters

Once cold, freeze the mixture. Freezing a warm mixture forms large ice crystals and a coarse, icy texture. Chilling it fully first lets it freeze smoothly and evenly.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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