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Strawberry Water Ice

A frozen beverage made from mashed strawberries, lemon and orange juice, water, sugar, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Strawberry Water Ice

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Strawberry Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the stems from the strawberries and mash them through a sieve.

Make the water ice

  1. Mix the strawberry puree with the lemon juice, orange juice, and enough water to make 1 pint of juice.

  2. Add the sugar and grated lemon rind, then rub the mixture through a sieve again.

  3. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavour and colour, and their pulp gives the ice body.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays smoothly textured rather than rock-hard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour and balances the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness and fruity aroma alongside the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture until solid. Freezing must be done with care because sugar and fruit acids lower the freezing point, so the mixture stays slushy for longer than plain water would. Freezing fully and evenly without stirring is what sets the icy, grainy texture of a water ice.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, syrup. 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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