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Cranberry Frappe

A chilled cranberry beverage made by boiling cranberries, straining, sweetening, and freezing with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Cranberry Frappe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over and wash the cranberries.

  2. Put the cranberries into a saucepan with the boiling water.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat, strain, and press through two thicknesses of cheesecloth.

Make and freeze

  1. Return the liquid to the saucepan, add the sugar, and stir over heat until dissolved.

  2. Cool the mixture, add the lemon juice, and freeze until moderately stiff.

  3. Serve with roast turkey or chicken, or as a sherbet course.

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

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

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

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavour and colour, and their pectin helps the frappe set.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart cranberry liquid and lowers its freezing point for a softer texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cranberry flavour and sharpens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding lemon juice and freezing. The mixture must be fully cool before freezing; freezing warm liquid slows ice formation and can leave a coarse, icy texture. Stop at moderately stiff so the frappe stays smooth.

“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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