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Drink

Strawberry-water Ice

A chilled strawberry beverage made by mashing strawberries, adding syrup, currant jelly or juice, lemon juice, sieving, and freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,270 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Strawberry-water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the strawberries in a large basin with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add the cold syrup, currant jelly or juice, and lemon juice, then mix well.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Freeze

  1. Pour it into a freezing pot and freeze according to your freezer's instructions.

  2. Keep the strawberries cool before use.

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. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

  2. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Syrup + curranttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together329 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor, color, and body of the water ice.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point so the ice stays soft and scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor and balances the sugar.
Currant jelly
Adds pectin and extra fruit flavor to deepen the berry taste.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the mash through a fine sieve removes seeds and fibrous pulp, leaving a smooth base. Skipping this leaves a gritty texture in the frozen ice.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, lemon. 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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