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Salted Watermelon Tequila and Basil Granita

Light, flavorful and easy to prepare. A perfect way to beat the heat.

By tastykitchen · From Open Recipes · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 505 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 6
Prep15 min

Ingredients

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Put the sugar in a small saucepan with a splash of water over medium heat and stir until dissolved, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat.

  2. Finely chop the basil leaves and stir them into the hot syrup. Let steep for 10 minutes, then strain out the basil and let the syrup cool completely.

  3. Purée the watermelon chunks until very smooth. Add the cooled syrup, lime juice, lime zest and silver tequila, and blend until combined.

  4. Pour the mixture into a shallow 9x13-inch (23x33 cm) metal pan and freeze for 45 minutes.

  5. Scrape the edges and stir the partly frozen mixture with a fork to break up ice crystals. Return to the freezer.

  6. Repeat the scraping and stirring every 30 minutes until the granita is evenly frozen into fluffy flakes, about 3 hours in total.

  7. Scrape into chilled glasses and serve right away.

By tastykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lime + basiltop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + limetop 21% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + basiltop 25% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lime

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

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Blueberrybetter flavor fit
  3. Peachabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, basil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).