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Dessert

Lemon Cream Ice

A chilled lemon-flavored custard ice cream made with milk or cream, sugar, lemon rind, cinnamon, salt, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk or cream, sugar, lemon rind, cinnamon, and salt.

  2. Heat the mixture gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  3. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks until smooth.

  4. Gradually add the warm milk mixture to the egg yolks, stirring constantly.

  5. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over low heat until it thickens slightly.

Cool and freeze

  1. Remove from heat and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the base as they cook and give the ice cream a rich, smooth body.
Milk or cream
Provides the fat and liquid that make the base creamy and smooth when frozen.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma and flavour from the oils in the peel.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over low heat. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat but can scramble if the mixture gets too hot, leaving a grainy texture. Stir steadily and cook only until the base thickens slightly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, cinnamon, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cinnamon, egg. 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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