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Dessert

Cherry Ice

Cherry Ice is a chilled dessert made from cherries, sugar, lemon juice, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cherry Ice

Why it works: Cherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,301 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cherry Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Stone the cherries.

  2. Bruise the cherries.

  3. Place the cherries in a pot with water and half a pound of sugar.

  4. Bring the pot to a boil.

  5. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into an earthen pan.

Add the kernels and lemon

  1. Pound the cherry kernels.

  2. Add the pounded kernels to a bowl with the lemon juice.

  3. Add the remaining pound of sugar to the cherry mixture.

  4. Strain the mixture into the lemon juice and kernels.

  5. Mix everything together thoroughly.

Freeze and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a sorbetière with pounded ice.

  2. Work the mixture until it sets.

  3. Serve in glasses.

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.

  1. Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and the body of the sorbet.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point so it stays scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavour.
Cherry kernels
Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the mixture.

The step that matters

Work the mixture until it sets. Churning in the sorbetière with pounded ice incorporates air and chills the mixture evenly. Stopping too early leaves it liquid, while over-working can make it grainy and icy.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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