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Dessert

Syrup for Water Ices

A syrup made from sherry, cornflour, milk, lemon rind, sugar, cream, and lemon juice, served over sponge cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 431 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Syrup for Water Ices

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Pour the sherry into a deep silver or glass dish.

  2. Mix the cornflour smoothly with a little milk.

  3. Boil the remaining milk with the lemon rind and sugar until flavored.

  4. Remove the lemon rind, then add the blended cornflour and milk.

  5. Boil for ten minutes and let the mixture cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Whip the cream slightly, then add it and the lemon juice to the cornflour mixture.

  2. Pour over the sponge cake, sprinkle with pistachios, and serve when perfectly cold.

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 + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornflour
Thickens the milk mixture so it sets into a smooth, sliceable cream.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a soft, light texture to the set mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor that cuts the richness of the cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens.

The step that matters

Boil for ten minutes after adding the cornflour. Cornflour starch only thickens fully when brought to a boil and held there, and it must be stirred smoothly to avoid lumps. Boiling for the full time cooks out the raw starch taste and sets the texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, milk, sugar, cream, pistachio):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, milk, sugar, cream, pistachio. 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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