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Dessert

Currant Ice

A frozen dessert made from currant juice, sugar, water, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Currant Ice

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Currant Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, combine 1 pint of currant juice, 1 pound of sugar, and 1 pint of water, and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Freeze the mixture until it is partly frozen.

Finish the ice

  1. Add the well-beaten egg whites and mix thoroughly.

  2. Continue to freeze until fully set.

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

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

  2. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Egg whites
Whipped foam traps air, making the frozen ice lighter and less dense.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer and easier to scoop.
Currant juice
Provides the main flavour and tartness of the ice, along with its liquid base.

The step that matters

Mixing in the egg whites. Egg whites must be well beaten and mixed in thoroughly after partial freezing. Evenly distributed foam traps air for a light texture; unevenly mixed whites leave streaks or dense pockets.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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.

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