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Dessert

Mille Fruit Ice

A chilled dessert made from clarified sugar, citrus zest, grape juice, preserved fruit, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mille Fruit Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove the zest from the lemons using a few lumps of sugar.

  2. Make the clarified sugar with the zest, then add the juice of the lemons and orange, grape juice, and sherry if desired.

  3. Freeze the mixture as directed.

Finish freezing

  1. When half frozen, add the beaten egg whites mixed with sugar and finish freezing.

  2. Remove the beater, stir in the chopped preserved fruit, and set the ice aside for 2 hours.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Grape + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + grapetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Clarified sugar
Sweetens the ice and keeps it soft, since sugar lowers the freezing point.
Egg whites
Beaten in during freezing to add air, giving a lighter, less icy texture.
Lemons
Provide acidity and bright flavour, balancing the sweetness.
Grape juice
Adds fruit flavour and colour along with sweetness.
Preserved fruits
Add chunks of concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture to the ice.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites when half frozen. A partly frozen mixture is thick enough to hold the beaten whites' air. If it is still liquid, the whites deflate and the ice turns dense. If it is fully frozen, the whites cannot blend in evenly.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar, sherry, 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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Cream 3

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