Why it works: Lemon and cherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,301 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Cherry Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cherries
Stone the cherries and bruise them.
Place cherries in a pot with water and 1½ pounds of sugar, then boil.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into an earthen pan.
Add the flavourings
Pound a handful of cherry kernels and add them to a basin with the lemon juice.
Combine the cherry mixture with the lemon juice and kernels, then mix well.
Freeze and serve
Pour the mixture into a freezer with pounded ice and churn until set.
Serve in glasses.
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.
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Lemon + cherrytop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,301 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,598 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 cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavour and most of the body of the ice.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer when frozen.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavour and balances the sweetness.
- Cherry kernels
- Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the cherry base.
The step that matters
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve. Sieving removes skins, stones and fibrous bits, so the ice freezes into a smooth texture rather than a gritty one.
Swap the cherry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):
- Orangefits better
- Limefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Cherrythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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