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Dessert

Ice Cream Sundae

A layered dessert of vanilla and chocolate ice cream topped with whipped cream, nuts, coconut, cherries, pineapple syrup, crushed pineapple, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 890 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Ice Cream Sundae

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the sundaes

  1. Scoop a serving of vanilla ice cream into a dish.

  2. Pour 1 tablespoon of vanilla nuts over the ice cream.

  3. Top with 1 ladle of whipped cream.

  4. Sprinkle shredded coconut over another serving of vanilla ice cream.

  5. Add 1 ladle of whipped cream and top with a red cherry.

Build the glass sundae

  1. In a glass, place 1 scoop of chocolate ice cream.

  2. Fill the glass nearly full with crushed ice.

  3. Pour about 1 ounce of pineapple syrup on top.

  4. Add 1 ladle of crushed pineapple over the syrup.

  5. Grind shelled almonds very finely and moisten with chocolate syrup.

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. Vanilla + cherrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Vanilla + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Coconut + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cherry + pineappletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 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

Vanilla ice cream
Provides the cold, creamy base that the toppings sit on and melt into.
Whipped cream
Adds light, airy richness and a soft, creamy texture on top.
Chocolate ice cream
Gives a second cold, creamy base with a deeper cocoa flavour.
Pineapple syrup
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour that soaks into the crushed ice.
Chocolate syrup
Adds sweetness and chocolate flavour to the ground almonds.

The step that matters

Grind shelled almonds very finely. Very fine grinding gives a smooth texture rather than gritty pieces, and moistening with syrup keeps the almonds from drying out and clumping.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, cream, syrup, coconut, cherry, chocolate, pineapple):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, cream, syrup, coconut, cherry, chocolate, pineapple. 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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