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Dessert

Strawberry-ivater Ice

A chilled strawberry ice made by freezing a mixture of mashed strawberries, syrup, currant jelly or juice, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,270 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Strawberry-ivater Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the strawberries in a large basin with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add the cold syrup, currant jelly or juice, and lemon juice; mix well.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve or tammy.

Freeze

  1. Pour it into a freezing pot and freeze as usual.

  2. Keep the strawberries cool throughout the process.

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. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Syrup + curranttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together329 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the water ice.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and, once frozen, helps keep the ice soft rather than rock-hard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour and balances the sweetness.
Currant jelly or juice
Adds extra fruit flavour and pectin-based body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Keep the strawberries cool throughout the process. Warm fruit and syrup begin to thaw and melt during handling, which makes the freezing uneven and can leave the ice grainy. Keeping the mixture cold from mashing through freezing helps form smooth, fine ice crystals.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, 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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