Skip to main content
Dessert

Royal Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made from egg yolks, whole eggs, lemon zest, syrup, cream, spices, orange flower water, citrus peel, and pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Royal Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whole eggs together in a bowl.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the lemon zest, syrup, cream, spice, and orange flower water.

  3. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and strain through a sieve into a bowl.

Freeze and mould

  1. Pour the mixture into a freezing pot and freeze it.

  2. Once frozen, mix in the chopped citron, lemon peel, orange peel, and pistachio nuts.

  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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

  4. Orange + pistachiotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and give it a rich, smooth body as they set with gentle heat.
Whole eggs
Add structure and help the custard thicken when heated.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture that stays creamy when frozen.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.

The step that matters

Heating the custard over low heat. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures and can scramble if heated too fast. Low heat with constant stirring thickens the custard smoothly, and the mixture should coat a spoon before straining.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, syrup, cream, orange, pistachio. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes