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Dessert

Bergamot Water Ice

A frozen water ice made from strained lemon juice, lemon zest, syrup, bergamot essence and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and bergamot work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 108 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Bergamot Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a basin, combine the strained juice of the lemons and the zest rubbed off on loaf sugar.

  2. Mix in the plain syrup and a little water.

  3. Add a few drops of Essence of Bergamot for flavor and the brandy.

  4. Stir well and pour the mixture into a freezer.

Freeze

  1. Freeze as desired.

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 + bergamottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Syrup + brandytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together561 recipes
  4. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Bergamot + brandytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the ice's flavor and balances the sweet syrup.
Plain syrup
Adds sweetness and, as dissolved sugar, lowers the freezing point for a softer texture.
Brandy
Alcohol resists freezing, so it keeps the ice softer and more scoopable.

Swap the bergamot

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Bergamotthe original

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