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Ginger Water Ice

A chilled ginger beverage made with lemon water ice, sugar, water, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 the ginger

  1. Pound 2/3 of the ginger in a mortar.

  2. Slice the remaining ginger thinly.

  3. Mix the ginger with 1 quart of lemon water ice and freeze.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 12 pounds of sugar and 12 pints of water in a pot to clarify.

  2. Add the beaten egg white to the water.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Fresh ginger
Supplies the main flavour and aroma, with pounded and sliced pieces releasing different amounts.
Lemon water ice
Forms the base that the ginger is mixed into and frozen with.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer.
Egg white
Clarifies the syrup by coagulating and gathering impurities as it heats.

The step that matters

Boil the egg white into the syrup. As the egg white heats it sets and gathers impurities, which rise to the surface. This is what leaves the syrup clear rather than cloudy, so the boil needs to bring the mixture fully up to heat.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg. 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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