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Mint Ice

Mint Ice is a chilled mint-flavored beverage made with mint leaves, lemon juice, sugar syrup, and crème de menthe.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,998 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mint Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mint

  1. Strip the mint leaves from the stems.

  2. Pack the stripped leaves into a cup.

  3. Pound the mint leaves to a pulp.

  4. Add the juice of two lemons to the pulp.

  5. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 pint of water and 1 pound of granulated sugar together for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour the syrup over the mint mixture and let it cool.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Finish and freeze

  1. Color the strained mixture a delicate green.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of crème de menthe.

  3. 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. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mint + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Lemon and sugar 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

Mint leaves
Provide the main flavor and the green color of the ice.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the ice and, dissolved in water, forms a syrup that helps keep it smooth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mint flavor and balances the sugar.
Crème de menthe
Adds more mint aroma and flavor to the finished ice.

The step that matters

Freezing the mixture. Sugar syrup lowers the freezing point, so the ice stays softer than plain water ice. Stirring or breaking up the mixture during freezing keeps ice crystals small and the texture smooth. Too little sugar makes it freeze hard.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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