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Dessert

Bourbon Cream Ice

A custard-based ice cream flavored with almond milk and various candied fruits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 911 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Bourbon Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Prepare a custard by heating 1 pint of milk with 12 oz. of sugar and 8 egg yolks until thickened.

  2. Strain the custard through a coarse sieve.

  3. Make almond milk by soaking 6 oz. of Jordan almonds and 12 bitter almonds in water, then blending and straining.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Soak the currants, candied orange peel, candied citron peel, dried cherries, and cut pineapple in maraschino.

Freeze and set

  1. Mix the custard with the almond milk and vanilla essence.

  2. Freeze until stiff.

  3. Add the soaked fruits to the mixture.

  4. Work the ice again.

  5. Freeze until firm.

  6. Transfer the ice to a mold and set it up.

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. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 add richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the ice.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice softer.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives the ice its body.
Jordan almonds
Provide the almond flavour and fat that enrich the base.
Maraschino
Adds aromatic, fruity flavour to the soaked fruit.

The step that matters

Freeze until stiff, then work the ice again. Freezing and then working the mixture breaks up ice crystals and incorporates air, so the ice stays smooth rather than icy. Adding the soaked fruit only after the base is partly frozen keeps it evenly distributed instead of sinking or clumping.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, almond, orange, pineapple, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, almond, orange, pineapple, vanilla. 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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