Name: Melon Water Ice
Ingredients: 1 ripe melon; 2 cups water; 1 ½ cups sugar; juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Melon and lemon work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 362 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Melon Water Ice

Ingredients

1 ripe melon
2 cups water
1 ½ cups sugar
juice of 1 lemon

Directions

Prepare the melon

Skin and pound the whole melon.
Pass the melon through a sieve.

Make the ice

Mix the melon puree with 2 cups of water, 1 ½ cups of sugar, and the juice of 1 lemon.
Freeze the mixture in the usual manner.

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.

Melon + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together362 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Melon + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together796 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon 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

Melon: Forms the flavoring and body of the ice once pureed into a smooth liquid.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer and less rock-hard.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the melon flavor and balances the sweetness.