Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓
Lemon Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Boil water and sugar together for five minutes to make a syrup.
Add lemon juice to the syrup, then cool and strain the mixture.
Freeze the mixture according to your ice cream maker's instructions.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 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
- Water
- Forms the liquid base that dissolves the sugar into a syrup.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream soft and scoopable.
- Lemon juice
- Adds bright acidity and the main lemon flavour.
The step that matters
Cool the mixture fully before freezing. A warm mixture freezes slowly, and slow freezing forms larger ice crystals, which make the ice cream coarse and icy.
“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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