Name: Lemon Water Ice
Ingredients: 1 pint boiling water; peel of 8 lemons; ½ lb loaf sugar; juice of 6 lemons; 6 drops lemon essence

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 ↓

Lemon Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

Pour boiling water over the lemon peel.
Add loaf sugar and let it cool.

Finish and freeze

Mix in the juice of the lemons.
Add lemon essence and strain through a fine sieve.
Freeze the mixture.

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

Lemon peel: Releases aromatic oils and flavour into the hot water.
Loaf sugar: Sweetens the ice water and lowers its freezing point for a softer texture.
Lemon juice: Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.

“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.