Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Lemon Water Ice

A frozen dessert made from lemon rind, juice, sugar, water, and whipped egg whites.

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

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 ↓

Plain Lemon Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the thin yellow rind from the lemons and place it in a jug with the lemon juice.

  2. Boil the water and sugar together for five minutes, then pour it over the lemons.

  3. Let the mixture stand until completely cold, then strain it.

Freeze

  1. Add the whipped egg whites and 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.

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 juice and aromatic oil from the rind that flavour the ice.
Sugar
Sweetens the lemon and balances its acidity, and helps keep the ice soft.
Eggs
Whipped whites add air and a lighter, foamy texture to the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until completely cold, then strain it.. Pouring hot syrup over lemons and adding egg whites too early can cook or dull the whites and dilute the flavour. Cooling fully before adding the whites keeps the foam stable and the flavour bright.

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 water ice recipes

Cream 3 See all 46 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes