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Drink

Rum Ice

Rum Ice is a chilled beverage made with lemon, sugar, water, egg whites, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Rum Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Remove the yellow rind from the lemon onto sugar lumps.

  2. Add enough sugar to make ¾ pound.

  3. Combine sugar and 1 pint of cold water in a saucepan.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of strained lemon juice and stir over heat until sugar dissolves.

Make the ice

  1. Gradually add 3 beaten egg whites and pour in before it simmers.

  2. Let cool, then mix in ¼ pint of old Jamaica rum.

  3. Freeze the mixture and serve in glasses.

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. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. 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

Egg whites
Beaten whites add a light, airy texture to the frozen mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves into the water to form a syrup.
Old jamaica rum
Adds flavour and keeps the ice softer by lowering its freezing point.

The step that matters

Pour the egg whites in before the syrup simmers. Adding the beaten whites while the syrup is still below a simmer keeps them from scrambling or cooking, so they stay light and blend smoothly into the mixture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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