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 ↓
Plain Ice Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Place 1 pint of cream in a freezing pot surrounded by ice.
Whisk the cream until it thickens and clings to the whisk.
Freeze and shape
Remove the whisk and add ½ cup of powdered sugar.
Stir and scrape the mixture with an ice scraper until fully frozen.
Transfer the ice cream into a mold and place it back in the ice to shape.
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
- Cream
- Provides fat and body, giving the frozen dessert its rich, smooth structure.
- Powdered sugar
- Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point slightly, keeping the texture softer.
The step that matters
Stir and scrape the mixture until fully frozen. Constant stirring and scraping keeps ice crystals small as the mixture freezes, so the result is smooth rather than grainy or icy. Stopping early leaves the texture uneven.
“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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