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Dessert

Ice Pudding of Peaches a l’Americaine

A chilled peach dessert made with cream, sugar, vanilla, maraschino, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Ice Pudding of Peaches a l’Americaine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix fresh cream with powdered sugar.

  2. Scrape seeds from vanilla bean, rub them with 2 teaspoons powdered sugar to separate them, then add to cream mixture.

  3. Stir in maraschino and freeze mixture as directed in previous instructions.

Pack and freeze

  1. Pack pudding into a 3‑pint mold.

  2. Surround mold with pounded ice mixed with coarse sea salt, press ice firmly around mold, and cover top with more ice and salt.

  3. Let sit about 2 hours before serving.

Unmold and serve

  1. Remove mold from ice.

  2. Dip mold in lukewarm water, then dry mold.

  3. Turn pudding out onto a dish.

  4. Serve with peach quarters and sauce.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Fresh cream
Forms the rich, creamy body of the pudding once frozen.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens the texture of the frozen pudding.
Vanilla bean
Adds aroma and flecks of flavour throughout the pudding.
Maraschino
Adds a fragrant, lightly sweet cherry note to the pudding.

The step that matters

Pressing and surrounding the mold with ice and salt. Salt lowers the melting point of the ice, making it colder than plain ice so the cream freezes firmly. Packing the ice snugly keeps contact even, so the pudding sets evenly rather than in patches.

“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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