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 sugar, water, and lemon shavings for 10 minutes to make a syrup.
Cool the syrup, add lemon juice, and strain the mixture.
Freeze the strained mixture until solid.
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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer.
- Lemon juice
- Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
- Lemon shavings
- Infuse the syrup with aromatic lemon oils and bitter notes during boiling.
The step that matters
Freeze the strained mixture until solid. Sugar lowers the freezing point, so the mixture takes longer to firm up than plain water. Freezing it fully and in a shallow layer helps form small ice crystals for a smooth, not grainy, texture.
“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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