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Dessert

Apple Water Ice

A frozen dessert made from apples, water, sugar, lemon rind, ginger, cinnamon, and ginger wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cook the apples in water with the lemon rind and sugar until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Flavour and freeze

  1. Add ginger, cinnamon, and ginger wine to the strained mixture.

  2. Let it cool, then pour into a freezer and freeze until stiff.

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.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooking apples
Provide the bulk of the pulp, which sets the body and flavour of the ice.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer when frozen.
Ginger wine
Adds aroma and warmth, and its alcohol keeps the ice from freezing rock hard.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked apple through a fine sieve removes skins, seeds and fibres, giving the smooth texture the ice depends on. Skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy, icy result.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, wine):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, wine. 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.

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