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Ginger Water Ice

A chilled beverage made with preserved ginger, lemon, egg whites, sugar, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the fiber from the ginger and pound it.

  2. Thinly peel the lemons and place the peel of three lemons in a jug.

Make the syrup

  1. Add 14 lb of white sugar to the jug.

  2. Squeeze and strain the juice from the lemons and add it to the jug.

  3. Pour in 2 quarts of boiling water and let it cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Stir in the pounded ginger and some meringue made with the egg whites.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Preserved ginger
Provides the main flavor and aromatic spice of the ice.
Lemons
Supply acidity and citrus aroma, balancing the sweetness of the sugar.
White sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays soft and scoopable.
Egg whites
Meringue adds airy lightness and a smoother, less icy texture.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool before adding the meringue. Hot liquid would cook the egg white meringue and deflate its foam, so it cannot lighten the texture once frozen.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, 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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