Why it works: Cherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,301 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Cherry Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Stone the cherries and bruise them.
Place the cherries in a pot with water and ½ cup of sugar, then bring to a boil.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl.
Flavour the base
Pound the cherry kernels and combine them in a bowl with the lemon juice.
Add the remaining sugar to the cherry mixture and strain in the lemon juice and kernels.
Mix everything together and pour it into a sorbet maker with pounded ice.
Churn and serve
Churn until it sets, then serve in glasses.
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.
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Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,301 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,598 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
- Ripe cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavour and juice that form the body of the ice.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point so it churns to a soft texture.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavour and balances the sweetness.
- Cherry kernels
- Add a subtle almond-like aroma when pounded and steeped in the mixture.
The step that matters
Churn until it sets. Churning while the mixture chills breaks up ice crystals and incorporates air, giving a smooth texture. Churning too little leaves it icy, while over-churning can make it grainy or stiff.
Swap the cherry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):
- Orangefits better
- Limefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Cherrythe 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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