Name: Macaroon Ice Cream
Ingredients: 1 quart cream; ¼ cup finely rolled macaroons; 1 cup sugar; ⅓ cup sherry; 1 teaspoon vanilla

Why it works: Sherry and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Macaroon Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the cream and sugar together.
Add the sherry and vanilla, then stir in the macaroons.
Stir well and freeze as you would ice cream.

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.

Sherry + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together506 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,301 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,038 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, 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

Cream: Provides fat and richness, giving the frozen dessert a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Macaroons: Add crisp, sweet almond-like flavor and chewy bits that contrast with the smooth base.
Sherry: Adds aroma and flavor and, as a liquid, slightly softens the frozen texture.

“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.