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Dessert

Mixed Fruit Ice

A chilled fruit ice made from orange, lemon, banana, apricot pulp and sugar dissolved in cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mixed Fruit Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pulp the oranges, lemons, bananas, and apricots (or use the juice of strawberries or pineapple).

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine 3 cups of cold water and 3 cups of sugar.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Stir in the prepared fruit pulp.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Banana + apricottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate (fruity).

  3. Orange + apricottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 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

Sugar
Sweetens the ice and, dissolved in water, lowers its freezing point for a softer texture.
Oranges
Provide juice and acidity that brighten the flavour.
Lemons
Add sharp acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness.
Bananas
Add body and creaminess to the pulp.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar fully. Sugar must dissolve completely in the water before the fruit is added. Undissolved crystals can recrystallise during freezing, making the ice grainy and less smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, banana, apricot, 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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