Why it works: Sugar and cherry brandy work together. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 61 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Cherry Water Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup base
Stone the cherries and pound the kernels.
Add boiling water to the cherries and sugar to sweeten.
Cover and let it cool.
Strain and freeze
Sieve or strain the mixture.
Freeze the mixture, adding cherry brandy or kirsch for a superior ice, if desired.
Mould or serve as preferred.
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.
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Sugar + cherry brandytop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together61 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the main flavour and colour of the ice.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the ice and softens its texture as it freezes.
- Cherry brandy or kirsch
- Optional addition that helps keep the ice softer when frozen.
The step that matters
Freeze the mixture. Sugar lowers the freezing point, so the mixture must be stirred or frozen carefully to form fine ice crystals rather than one solid block. Alcohol also lowers the freezing point, which makes the ice softer.
“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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