Name: Currant Water Ice
Ingredients: 1 quart red currant juice; 2 cups sugar; juice of 1 lemon; 1 pint boiling water

Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Currant Water Ice

Ingredients

1 quart red currant juice
2 cups sugar
juice of 1 lemon
1 pint boiling water

Directions

Make the syrup

Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water.

Freeze

Add the red currant juice and lemon juice.
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.

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.

Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together309 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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: Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer and scoopable.
Red currant juice: Provides the main fruit flavor and tartness of the ice.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.