Name: Currant Ice
Ingredients: 2 pounds fine ripe currants; ½ pound raspberries; cold syrup to taste; juice of 1 large lemon or 2 small lemons (optional)

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 ↓

Currant Ice

Ingredients

2 pounds fine ripe currants
½ pound raspberries
cold syrup to taste
juice of 1 large lemon or 2 small lemons (optional)

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Strip currants from stalks and combine with raspberries.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Sweeten and freeze

Mix in enough cold syrup to make it sweet.
Add lemon juice if desired for extra flavor.
Freeze the mixture using the ice and salt method described.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,270 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,235 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Currant + syruptop 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

Currants: Provide the main tart flavor and juice that forms the base of the ice.
Raspberries: Add fragrant aroma and a softer, rounder fruit flavor to the currants.
Cold syrup: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer when frozen.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fruit.

The step that matters

Sweeten the purée to taste before freezing. Sugar lowers the freezing point of the mixture, so too little makes the ice hard and icy, while the right amount keeps it smooth and scoopable. Tasting before freezing lets the cook correct sweetness, since flavor is harder to adjust once frozen.