Why it works: Sugar and cherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,598 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cherry Water Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Select well-ripened cherries, preferably Morellos, wash and stone them.
Make the water ice
In a saucepan, combine the cherries, cherry stones, sugar, and boiling water.
Heat the mixture over the fire for 5 minutes without boiling.
Remove from heat, press through a sieve, cool, and freeze.
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.
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Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,598 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the main flavour and colour, and the fruit pulp that gives the ice its body.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer when frozen.
- Cherry stones
- Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the cooking liquid as it heats.
The step that matters
Heat without boiling. Boiling can cook off fresh cherry flavour and darken the colour, so gentle heating keeps the taste bright while the sugar dissolves.
“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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