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Dessert

Currant Ick

Currant ice is a fruit-based frozen dessert made from currants, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Currant Ick

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Squeeze the picked currants through a sieve to extract the juice.

  2. Boil the sugar until it reaches a very high temperature.

  3. If desired, add the juice of four lemons to the currant juice for a mellower flavor.

  4. Strain the mixture again through the sieve.

Finish

  1. Transfer the mixture to a suitable pot and finish as you would with other ice recipes.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

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

Picked currants
Provide the main flavor and tartness of the ice through their juice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer and scoopable.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the currant flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar to a very high temperature. Sugar dissolved in the syrup lowers the freezing point and softens the texture of the ice. Cooking it to a higher temperature concentrates the syrup and changes how firm the finished ice becomes. Overcooking can cause browning and a bitter taste.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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