Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Fruit Water Ices
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Choose ripe fresh fruit such as currants, raspberries, or strawberries.
Remove the stalks and mash the fruit in an earthen pan with a wooden spoon, adding a little sugar to help extract the juice.
Rub the mashed fruit through a sieve to extract the juice.
Mix and freeze
Take 1 pint of syrup (or make it fresh, omitting the egg white), let it cool, then mix it with the fruit juice.
Freeze the mixture according to your preferred method, which should take about 1 hour.
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.
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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Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,842 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fresh fruit juice
- Provides the main flavour and aroma, and the liquid base of the ice.
- Syrup
- Adds sweetness and, once frozen, helps keep the ice smooth rather than rock-hard.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juice when the fruit is mashed.
The step that matters
Rub the mashed fruit through a sieve. Pressing the pulp through a sieve removes seeds and fibres, so the juice freezes into a smooth ice instead of a gritty one.
“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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