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 ↓
Cherry Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pound half the stones of the cherries in a mortar.
Infuse and extract
Combine the pounded stones and bruised cherries with 1 pint of water and let sit for 2 hours.
Squeeze the mixture through a bag to extract the juice.
Finish
Mix the extracted juice with ½ cup of sugar.
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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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
- Cherries
- Provide the main flavour and colour, and their juice forms the base of the ice.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point so the ice stays softer.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavour and balances the sweetness.
The step that matters
Squeezing the mixture through a bag. Pressing too hard or using a fine-mesh cloth can force through pulp and bitter stone fragments, making the juice cloudy or harsh. Gentle, steady pressure yields a clearer, cleaner-tasting base.
“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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