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Drink

Pineapple Water Ice

A chilled frozen drink made from boiled water, sugar, lemon juice, and grated pineapple.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pineapple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 3 quarts of water with 2 pounds of sugar for 5 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool completely.

Freeze

  1. Add the juice of 2 lemons and 1 quart of grated pineapple.

  2. Mix well and pour into a freezer.

  3. Freeze while stirring slowly.

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. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point so the ice stays soft and scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Grated pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavor and small pieces of fruit in the ice.

The step that matters

Freeze while stirring slowly. Stirring as the mixture freezes breaks up ice crystals as they form, keeping the texture fine and grainy rather than hard and icy. Sugar also lowers the freezing point, so the mixture stays partly slushy and needs stirring to firm evenly.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe 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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