Name: Cherry Ice
Ingredients: 3 lemons (juiced); 1 cup sugar; 1 quart red cherries; 1 pint water

Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Cherry Ice

Ingredients

3 lemons (juiced)
1 cup sugar
1 quart red cherries
1 pint water

Directions

Prepare

Juice the lemons and combine with sugar in a bowl.
Add the red cherries and water, mixing well.

Freeze and serve

Freeze the mixture until solid.
Serve in sherbet glasses, topped with candied cherries.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 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

Lemons: Add acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavor.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer to eat.
Red cherries: Provide the main fruit flavor and the red color.

“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.