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Dessert

Lemon Ice

A chilled lemon-flavored dessert made by freezing a corn starch base with lemon juice, sugar, lemon extract, and salt.

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

Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Ice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare a gallon of thick corn starch mixture.

  2. Add the juice of 5-6 lemons.

  3. Stir in sugar to taste.

  4. Mix in 1 teaspoon of lemon extract or a little grated lemon rind.

  5. Add ½ teaspoon of salt.

  6. Freeze the mixture as you would ice cream.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

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

Corn starch mixture
Forms a thick base that gives the frozen ice cream body and a smooth, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds the sharp acidity that defines the lemon flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon's acidity and softens the frozen texture.
Lemon extract or grated lemon rind
Adds aromatic lemon flavour that reinforces the fresh citrus taste.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar. 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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