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Dessert

Cherry Ice

A frozen dessert made from cherries, sugar, water, lemon juice, and optional raspberry or currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cherry Ice

Why it works: Lemon and raspberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Cherry Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove stems from cherries and wash the cherries.

  2. Place them in a porcelain or aluminum kettle.

  3. Crush cherries with a potato masher.

  4. Add sugar and water.

  5. Boil for 15 minutes.

  6. Remove from heat.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain through a coarse strainer, pressing some pulp through the strainer, and discard skins and stones.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Add lemon juice.

  4. Add raspberry or currant juice if using.

  5. Freeze slowly.

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. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Sour cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour, tartness and bulk of the frozen dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point so the ice stays soft.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavour and balances the sweetness.
Raspberry or currant juice
Adds extra fruit flavour and aroma, optional.

The step that matters

Freeze slowly. Slow freezing gives small ice crystals, so the dessert stays smooth rather than coarse and icy. Sugar in the mixture also lowers the freezing point, so it sets gradually.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Raspberrythe 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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