Name: Currant Ice
Ingredients: 2 pounds ripe red currants; ½ pound raspberries; 1 pint thick sugar syrup

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Currant Ice

Ingredients

2 pounds ripe red currants
½ pound raspberries
1 pint thick sugar syrup

Directions

Prepare the mixture

Rub the currants and raspberries through a fine sieve into an earthen dish.
Add the thick sugar syrup and mix well.

Freeze

Pour the mixture into a freezer and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Red currant + syruptop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together76 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants: Provides the tart, acidic base flavour and most of the body of the ice.
Raspberries: Adds aroma and a fuller fruit flavour to the currant base.
Sugar syrup: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer and easier to scoop.