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Dessert

Pomegranate Water Ice

A frozen dessert made from pomegranate juice, syrup, vanilla, cochineal, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pomegranate and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 225 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pomegranate Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Press the pips of the pomegranates through a strainer to produce 1 pint of juice.

  2. Combine the pomegranate juice, syrup, essence of vanilla, cochineal, and lemon juice in a bowl. Mix well and freeze until solid.

  3. Scoop and serve as a refreshing dessert.

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. Pomegranate + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together225 recipes

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

  2. Pomegranate + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together43 recipes

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

  3. Syrup + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pomegranate + syruptop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pomegranate pips
Provide the juice that forms the main flavour and colour of the sorbet.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and softens the texture so the frozen sorbet is scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet pomegranate flavour.

The step that matters

Freeze until solid. Freezing the mixture while stirring it well helps form small ice crystals, which gives a smooth texture. Freezing it without stirring can produce a coarse, icy result.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pomegranate, syrup, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pomegranate, syrup, vanilla. 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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