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Dessert

Currant, Raspberry and Strawberry Ice

A chilled dessert made from mashed currants, raspberries, strawberries, sugar, water, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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, Raspberry and Strawberry Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Mash the berries with the sugar and let them stand for at least 1 hour.

  2. Squeeze the mixture through a cloth to extract all the juice.

  3. Add an equal measure of water to the juice.

Finish the ice

  1. When the mixture is half frozen, fold in the beaten egg whites.

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 + 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

Mixed berries
Provide the main flavour, colour and fruity acidity of the ice.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add air and a lighter, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Fold the beaten whites in while the mixture is only half frozen. If it is too liquid, the whites deflate and lose their air; if it is too firm, they will not blend in evenly and the texture becomes uneven.

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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