Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Ice Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Make the base
Scald the cream and dissolve the sugar in it while hot.
Let the mixture cool, then pour it into the ice cream freezer.
Freeze
Ensure the dasher is right side up and the can is properly adjusted.
Layer ice and salt in the freezer: 3 inches of ice, then 1 inch of salt, repeating until full.
Turn the crank to begin freezing the mixture.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pure cream
- Provides the fat that makes the frozen ice cream rich and smooth in texture.
- Granulated sugar
- Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture so it stays scoopable.
- Ripe fruit
- Supplies the main flavor, aroma and natural acidity of the finished ice cream.
- Coarse or rock salt
- Lowers the freezing point of the melting ice so the brine gets cold enough to freeze the mixture.
The step that matters
Layer ice and salt in the freezer. Salt dissolves into the meltwater and lowers its freezing point, making the brine colder than ice alone. Without enough salt in the layers, the cream mixture will freeze slowly or not at all.
“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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