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Dessert

Currant Ice

A frozen dessert made from sugar, water, currant juice, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Currant Ice

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 ↓

Currant Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water together for 10 minutes.

  2. Skim the mixture and let it cool.

Freeze

  1. Add currant juice and lemon juice to the cooled mixture.

  2. Pour into a freezer and freeze until half frozen.

  3. Beat egg whites to a stiff froth and mix in powdered sugar.

  4. Add the egg mixture to the partially frozen currant mixture and freeze until very firm.

  5. Set aside for 3 hours before serving.

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.

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.

  1. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they add air and a light, smooth texture to the ice cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream soft rather than rock hard.
Currant juice
Provides the main fruit flavor and liquid base of the ice cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the tart currant flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the partially frozen base. If the base is fully frozen, the whipped egg whites cannot blend in evenly and the air they hold is lost. Stopping at half frozen lets the foam fold in and keeps the texture light.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg. 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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