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Raspberry Water Ice

A frozen raspberry ice made with raspberries, syrup, lemon juice, sugar, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Raspberry Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pass the raspberries through a fine sieve into a basin.

  2. Add the syrup and lemon juice to the raspberries and mix well.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture until it is completely hard.

Make the syrup

  1. For the syrup, combine the sugar and cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Stir occasionally until the sugar is melted.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and let it boil for about 10 minutes, removing any scum that forms.

  4. Strain the syrup and let it cool.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and the bulk of the water ice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer and scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the raspberry flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Freeze until completely hard. Sugar lowers the freezing point of the mixture, so it freezes slowly and forms small ice crystals. Freezing it fully, without stopping early, gives a firm, evenly set texture rather than a loose, icy one.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, sugar. 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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