Name: Ices and Ice Cream
Ingredients: 1½ cups granulated sugar; 1 cup water; ½ egg white (beaten); 1 pint fruit juice or 1½ pints fruit flavor

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ices and Ice Cream

Ingredients

1½ cups granulated sugar
1 cup water
½ egg white (beaten)
1 pint fruit juice or 1½ pints fruit flavor

Directions

Make the syrup

Boil 1½ cups sugar with 1 cup water for 15 minutes.
Add the beaten egg white and let it boil.
Strain and cool.

Freeze and serve

Mix 1 pint of syrup with 1 pint of fruit juice or 1½ pints of fruit flavor.
Freeze the mixture, beating it occasionally until fully frozen.
Serve in glasses or mold with a small amount of dissolved gelatin for shape.

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.

Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar: Dissolves into the syrup, providing sweetness and body to the frozen mixture.
Egg white: Its proteins help clarify the syrup as they cook and coagulate, removing impurities.
Fruit juice: Supplies the main flavor and liquid base of the ice cream.