Name: Damson Ice Cream
Ingredients: 3 ounces preserved damsons; 2 lemons; 1 pint cream

Why it works: Lemon and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,640 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Damson Ice Cream

Ingredients

3 ounces preserved damsons
2 lemons
1 pint cream

Directions

Prepare the damsons

Pound the preserved damsons and break the stones.

Make the mixture

In a bowl, squeeze in the juice of two lemons.
Add 1 pint of cream and mix well.
Pass the mixture through a sieve to remove solids.

Freeze

Freeze the mixture until solid.

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.

Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,640 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Preserved damsons: Provide the main fruit flavour and colour of the ice cream.
Lemons: Add acidity that brightens the sweet, rich fruit flavour.
Cream: Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth 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.