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Dessert

Millefruit Ice Cream

A fruit-flavored ice cream made with syrup, lemon juice, cream, peels, angelica, sweetmeats, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Millefruit Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine the syrup and lemon juice in a bowl.

  2. Add the cream and mix well, then freeze the mixture.

Add the fruit and colour

  1. Once frozen, fold in the lemon peel, orange peel, angelica, and sweetmeats.

  2. Add a small amount of cochineal, mixing gently to create a marbled effect.

  3. Transfer the mixture into molds and freeze 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.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Orange + angelicatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cream + angelicatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and helps keep the frozen mixture soft rather than rock-hard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Cochineal
Provides red colour, creating the marbled effect when mixed gently through the base.

The step that matters

Mixing in the cochineal gently. Cochineal should be folded in only lightly so it streaks through the cream rather than blending evenly. Overmixing turns the whole batch an even pink and loses the marbled look.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, lemon, cream, angelica):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, lemon, cream, angelica. 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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