Name: Black Currant Ice Cream
Ingredients: 1 large spoonful black currant jelly; 1 lemon, juiced; 1 pint heavy cream

Why it works: Black currant and lemon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Black Currant Ice Cream

Ingredients

1 large spoonful black currant jelly
1 lemon, juiced
1 pint heavy cream

Directions

In a bowl, combine the black currant jelly and lemon juice.
Add the heavy cream and mix well.
Pass the mixture through a sieve to remove any solids.
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.

Black currant + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together53 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Black currant + creamtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together67 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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

Heavy cream: Provides fat that makes the frozen mixture rich and smooth-textured.
Black currant jelly: Adds the main fruit flavour and sweetness, plus colour, to the ice cream.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the black currant jelly.