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Ginger Water Ice

A chilled beverage made from ginger, syrup, citrus, sugar, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ginger Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ginger

  1. Finely pound the ginger, gradually adding a little of its syrup, and press through a fine sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Rub the sugar on the orange rind, then add the sugar to the ginger along with the syrup, lemon juice, orange juice, and cold water.

  2. Boil the mixture, strain it, and let it cool.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture in the usual way, adding the whipped egg white when it is about half frozen.

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.

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. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 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

Egg white
Whipped and folded in when partly frozen, it adds a light, airy texture to the ice.
Preserved ginger
Provides the main ginger flavour and aroma, with some texture from the pounded pieces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Orange juice
Adds fruit flavour, sweetness and acidity to the base.

The step that matters

Adding the whipped egg white. Fold it in only when the mixture is about half frozen. If it is added too early the foam can collapse into the liquid, and if it is added too late it will not mix evenly, so the ice loses its lightness.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

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