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Dessert

Currant Ice

A frozen dessert made from currants, clarified sugar, and lemon juice.

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

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 Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

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

Cook and strain

  1. Add the clarified sugar to the juice and boil until very thick.

  2. Squeeze in the juice of four lemons for added flavor.

  3. Strain the mixture again through the sieve.

Freeze

  1. Pour into an icing pot and freeze like other ices.

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. 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

Currants
Provide the main juice, tart fruit flavor and deep color of the ice.
Clarified sugar
Adds sweetness and, when boiled thick, body that controls ice crystal texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the currant flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice and sugar until very thick. Boiling concentrates the sugar, which lowers the freezing point and keeps the frozen ice smooth rather than hard and icy. Too little boiling leaves it watery and crystalline.

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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