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Drink

Muscat Water Ice

A chilled lemon gelatine beverage with sherry, served in punch glasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Muscat Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Mix the lemon juice, grated lemon rind, and sugar.

  2. Let stand for 1 hour.

  3. Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft.

  4. Dissolve it in boiling water.

  5. Add the dissolved gelatine to the lemon and sugar mixture.

  6. Stir until dissolved.

  7. Color the mixture a delicate green.

  8. Strain it.

Freeze and serve

  1. When cold, add the sherry.

  2. Freeze.

  3. Serve in punch 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. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  3. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Gelatine
Sets a light body so the frozen mixture holds a soft, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and keeps it from freezing rock-hard.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Sherry
Adds aroma and flavor; added after cooling so its alcohol and scent are not lost to heat.

The step that matters

Add the sherry only when the mixture is cold. Sherry's alcohol and aromatic compounds evaporate and fade when heated, so adding it to hot mixture weakens its flavor. Alcohol also lowers the freezing point, so it affects how firm the ice becomes.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry. 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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