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Grape Water Ice

A frozen beverage made from lemon juice, orange peel, water, clarified syrup, grape syrup, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Grape Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine the lemon juice, orange peel, water, clarified syrup, grape syrup, and sherry in a bowl and stir well to combine.

  2. Strain the mixture to remove solids.

Freeze

  1. Pour the strained mixture into a freezer-safe container and freeze until solid.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Grape + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + grapetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the grape flavour.
Clarified syrup
Sugar that sweetens the ice and keeps it softer by lowering the freezing point.
Grape syrup
Provides the main grape flavour and sweetness.
Sherry
Adds aroma and some alcohol, which keeps the ice from freezing rock hard.

The step that matters

Freeze until solid. Sugar and alcohol lower the freezing point, so the mixture freezes slowly and unevenly, forming ice crystals. Stirring or checking during freezing helps produce a smoother, finer texture.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, syrup, 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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