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 ↓
Cranberry Frappe
Ingredients
Directions
Cook cranberries in water for 8 minutes.
Force the mixture through a sieve.
Add sugar and lemon juice.
Freeze until it reaches a mushy consistency.
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.
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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
- Cranberries
- Provide the main fruit flavor, tartness, and bulk of the frappe.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and softens the tartness of the cranberries.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.
The step that matters
Freeze until mushy. Freezing forms ice crystals that must stay small and slushy; freezing solid makes it too hard to scoop. Stirring or checking during freezing helps achieve the right texture, and sugar lowers the freezing point so the mixture stays partly soft.
“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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