Name: Water Ices
Ingredients: 2 cups water; 1 cup sugar; 2 cups fresh fruit (such as peaches, apricots, or cherries)

Why it works: Sugar and peach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Water Ices

Ingredients

2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 cups fresh fruit (such as peaches, apricots, or cherries)

Directions

Prepare the juice

Mash the fruit with the sugar and let it sit to release juice.
Press the mixture through a fine muslin cloth to extract the juice.

Mix and freeze

Combine the fruit juice with the water and mix well.
Freeze the mixture until solid.

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.

Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh fruit: Provides the main flavor, aroma and the juice that becomes the ice.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer.

“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.