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Dessert

Peach Ice

A frozen dessert made from peaches, sugar, water, lemon, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Peach Ice

Why it works: Peach and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Peach Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar, water, and some peach stones together, then remove from heat.

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel and cut the peaches, then strain them through a colander.

Combine and freeze

  1. Add lemon juice and peach pulp to the sugar and water mixture.

  2. Remove the peach stones and freeze the mixture.

  3. When half frozen, fold in the beaten egg white.

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. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

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

  2. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and pulp that gives the ice its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays soft and scoopable.
Egg white
Folded in when half frozen, it adds lightness and a smoother, airier texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the peach flavor.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg white when half frozen. If the mixture is fully frozen, the beaten egg white cannot blend in evenly and the ice becomes dense and icy. If it is still liquid, the white deflates and the mixture stays watery, so timing the fold matters.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg. 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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