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 ↓
Lemon Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil sugar and water together for five minutes to make a syrup.
Cool the syrup, then add lemon juice and strain.
Freeze and serve
Freeze the mixture using three parts crushed ice to one part rock salt.
Serve in a frappe or champagne glass.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the mixture and, dissolved in syrup, keeps the frozen result softer.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor that balances the sugar.
- Crushed ice
- Provides the cold that chills and freezes the lemon syrup.
- Rock salt
- Lowers the melting point of the ice, making it cold enough to freeze the mixture.
The step that matters
Freezing with crushed ice and rock salt. Salt lowers the temperature at which ice melts, so the ice-and-salt mix becomes much colder than ice alone. Using the right ratio of salt to ice gives enough cold to freeze the syrup. Too little salt leaves the mixture slow to freeze.
“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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