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Drink

Peach Water Ice

A chilled peach syrup drink made by boiling peaches with sugar, adding egg white, lemon juice, and cochineal, then freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Peach Water Ice

Why it works: Peach and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Peach Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Pare, stone, and quarter the peaches.

  2. Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg white to a firm froth and add it to the syrup with the peach kernel.

Make the peach base

  1. Simmer the peaches in the syrup until soft.

  2. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and freeze

  1. Add the lemon juice and cochineal to the liquid.

  2. Freeze the mixture in the usual way.

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. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

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

Ripe peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and, once softened and pressed, the body of the ice.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer when frozen.
Egg white
Whipped to a froth, it adds light air and helps give a smoother, more aerated texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the peach flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer the peaches until soft. Peaches must be cooked fully soft so they break down and press through the sieve smoothly. Undercooked fruit leaves fibrous lumps and a grainy texture in the finished ice.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon. 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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