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Drink

Ginger Water-Ice

A chilled ginger-infused beverage made with preserved ginger, ground ginger, water, lemons, syrup, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Water-Ice

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ginger infusion

  1. Pound the preserved ginger with ground ginger in a mortar.

  2. Add 1 cup of water to the ginger mixture.

Flavour the syrup

  1. Rub the rinds of the lemons with a few lumps of loaf sugar and add them to 1 pint of syrup.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of lemon juice and ½ cup of water.

  3. Add the pounded ginger mixture and let it soak for 1–2 hours.

Freeze

  1. Pass the mixture through a cloth into a freezer and freeze.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Preserved ginger
Gives the ice its main ginger flavour and aroma.
Ground ginger
Adds a deeper, warmer ginger spice to the infusion.
Lemons
Their rind and juice add aroma and sharp acidity to the syrup.
Syrup
Provides the sweetness and the body that keeps the ice smooth when frozen.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Pearfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, syrup. 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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