Name: Strawberry Water Ice
Ingredients: 1 quart scarlet strawberries; juice of 2 lemons; ½ cup water; 1 pint clarified sugar; a little food coloring (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Puree the strawberries in a blender.
Mix the strawberry puree with lemon juice, water, and clarified sugar, then add food coloring if desired.
Freeze the mixture until solid.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Strawberries: Supply the main flavor, the pink color, and the water that freezes into the ice.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor.
Clarified sugar: Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer and easier to scoop.

“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.