Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Ice

A frozen lemon dessert made with lemon zest, juice, sugar syrup, water, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lemon Ice

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Grate the rinds of the lemons into a bowl and squeeze in the juice.

  2. Make a boiling syrup with the sugar and half the water.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the lemon zest and juice.

Make the base

  1. Let the mixture cool.

  2. Add the remaining water.

  3. Strain the mixture into a freezer.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze as usual.

  2. Add the whipped egg whites and beat to combine.

  3. Freeze again.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lemons
Supply the acidity and fragrant aroma from the zest and juice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.
Egg whites
Whipped air folded in gives the ice a lighter, smoother, less icy texture.

The step that matters

Beating in the whipped egg whites. The whites hold air that makes the ice light. Beating them in gently and quickly keeps that air from collapsing, so the texture stays smooth rather than dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

More lemon ice recipes

Cream 95Orange 15Water 6Cream Candy 4 See all 131 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipesLemon Water IceLemon Water Ice55 recipes