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Dessert

Currant Ice

Currant ice is a frozen dessert made with currant juice, water, sugar, egg whites, and grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Currant Ice

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Currant Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ice

  1. Combine currant juice and water in a bowl.

  2. Sweeten with sugar to taste.

  3. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  4. Stir them into the mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture into a freezer.

  6. Freeze until solid.

Prepare the coconut

  1. Grate the coconut.

  2. Mix it with sugar.

Serve

  1. Serve the currant ice topped with the sweetened grated coconut.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

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

  3. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

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

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Currant + coconuttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Currant juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and most of the liquid base of the ice.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam that traps air, giving the frozen ice a lighter texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, so the ice stays less hard and icy.
Coconut
Adds texture and a toasty, sweet flavour as a topping.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until frothy. Whites whipped to a foam trap air bubbles. If they are under-beaten, the ice freezes denser; if over-beaten, they can clump and stop blending smoothly into the liquid.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, coconut. 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 currant ice recipes

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