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Dessert

Lemon Ice

A gelatin dessert made with sugar, water, gelatine, lemon juice, and optional orange.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Lemon Ice

Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lemon Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and cook gelatine according to directions (p. 335), add water to make 1 cup, keep warm.

  2. Cook sugar and 3 cups of water together for 5 minutes and strain into the gelatine.

  3. Prepare lemon and orange juice.

  4. If desired, shave off a little of the thin yellow rind and let it stand in the juice for a few minutes. Strain the rind out.

Make the ice

  1. When the gelatine mixture is partially cooled, add the juice gradually, stirring.

  2. The orange may be omitted.

  3. If omitting gelatine, boil sugar with 1 qt. of water and when cool combine with the juice.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

111Calories
1 gProtein
0 gFat
28 gCarbs

Counts 2 of 3 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Orange1 medium (131g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Evora Bucknum Perkins. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Gelatine (in the method)
Sets the liquid so the ice holds a smooth, firm body rather than freezing into hard crystals.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the freeze, keeping the ice from becoming rock hard.
Lemon juice (in the method)
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the flavor of the ice.

The step that matters

Add the juice to the partly cooled gelatine mixture. Adding acidic juice to a very hot gelatine mixture can weaken its setting power and cause a cloudy or uneven texture, so cooling it partly first and stirring gradually helps the mixture blend evenly.

“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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