Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Strawberry Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the strawberries
Pick over, wash, drain, and hull the strawberries.
Sprinkle with sugar, cover, and let stand for 2 hours.
Wash the strawberries, then squeeze through cheesecloth.
Add water and lemon juice to the strawberry juice.
Freeze
Freeze the mixture using 3 parts finely crushed ice to 1 part rock salt.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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
- Strawberries
- Provide the main flavor, color, and juice that becomes the frozen base.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer and smoother.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor.
- Rock salt
- Lowers the temperature of the ice so the mixture can freeze.
- Finely crushed ice
- Provides the cold medium that draws heat away from the mixture as it freezes.
The step that matters
Freezing with ice and rock salt. Salt melts ice and lowers its temperature below the normal freezing point of water, so the mixture gets much colder than ice alone. Using the stated 3 parts ice to 1 part salt keeps the bath cold enough to freeze the strawberry mixture properly.
“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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