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Drink

Water Ice

A cold beverage made from port, horseradish, spices, walnuts, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Bruise the young walnuts slightly.

  2. Put them in a jar with salt and vinegar, and let them sit for 8 days, stirring daily.

Make the liquid

  1. Drain the liquid into a saucepan.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients to the liquid.

  3. Simmer gently for 40 minutes.

Bottle and store

  1. When cold, strain the mixture into small bottles.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly, cover with melted wax, and store in a cool, dry place.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Young tender walnuts
Supply the main flavour, and their tannins add a slightly bitter edge as they steep.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and helps preserve the mixture during the long steep.
Port
Adds sweetness, body and depth of flavour to the liquid.
Finely grated horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that carries through the simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Steeping the walnuts for 8 days. The salt and vinegar must work on the bruised walnuts for the full eight days, stirring daily, so the walnuts soften and release their flavour evenly. Stopping early leaves the flavour weak and the mixture less stable.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, nutmeg, ginger, clove, pepper, walnut, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, nutmeg, ginger, clove, pepper, walnut, vinegar. 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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