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Apricot Water Ice

A chilled apricot-infused water flavored with lemon and sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,098 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the apricots into the water.

  2. Add the lemon juice and syrup or powdered sugar to taste.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Freeze the mixture, tasting as it freezes and adjusting with more lemon juice or syrup if needed.

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. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 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

Ripe apricots
Provide the main fruit flavor and body, and their pulp gives the ice water its color.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apricot flavor and balances the sweetness.
Syrup or powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen ice by lowering its freezing point.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture, tasting as it freezes. Sugar and acid change how the mixture freezes and how sweet it tastes. Tasting during freezing lets you adjust lemon juice or syrup before the ice sets too firm to balance well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, syrup. 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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