Name: Cherry Water Ice
Ingredients: 1 pound cherries, stoned and mashed; juice of 2 lemons; ½ pint water; 1 pint clarified syrup

Why it works: Lemon and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,235 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cherry Water Ice

Ingredients

1 pound cherries, stoned and mashed
juice of 2 lemons
½ pint water
1 pint clarified syrup

Directions

Strain the cherries, lemon juice, and water to remove solids.
Add the clarified syrup and stir thoroughly.
Freeze the mixture 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.

Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,235 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries: Provide the main flavour and colour, and much of the body of the water ice.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavour and keeps it from tasting flat.
Clarified syrup: Supplies sugar, which sweetens the ice and keeps it softer by lowering its freezing point.

“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.