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Raspberry and Strawberry Water Ice

A frozen beverage made from raspberry juice, simple syrup, red currant or lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and red currant match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 155 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Raspberry and Strawberry Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine raspberry juice, simple syrup, red currant juice or lemon juice, and water in a bowl. Mix well and freeze the mixture.

Finish

  1. Once sufficiently frozen, mold the ice as desired.

  2. For a Neapolitan method, fold in 1 egg white to create a meringue mass 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. Raspberry + red curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Raspberry + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Raspberry + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Syrup + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together76 recipes
  5. Red currant + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Raspberry juice
Provides the main flavor and most of the liquid base of the ice.
Simple syrup
Adds sweetness and softens the texture by lowering the freezing point.
Red currant juice or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Egg white
Whips into a meringue that lightens the texture of the Neapolitan version.

The step that matters

Mixing the base before freezing. The sugar and juices must be fully combined so the syrup is evenly distributed. Uneven sweetness can cause patchy freezing and icy pockets, and the sugar's effect on freezing point depends on it being dissolved.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Red currantthe original
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against raspberry, syrup, egg. 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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