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Dessert

Imitation Plum Cake Ice

A frozen custard dessert flavored with chestnut farina, raisins, currants, candied peels, pistachios, and curacao.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and pistachio share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Imitation Plum Cake Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare custard cream ice and add chestnut farina.

  2. Mix in stoned raisins, currants, candied peels, and shredded pistachios.

Mould and serve

  1. Mould the mixture in a Charlotte mould.

  2. When ready to serve, pour half-frozen vanilla cream ice over it.

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. Chestnut + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chestnut + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together244 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chestnut + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pistachio + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + pistachiotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnut farina
Provides the base body and structure of the frozen cake mixture.
Vanilla cream ice
Adds creamy richness and smooth texture when poured over the mould.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Candied peels
Add sweet, aromatic citrus flavour and chewy bite.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chestnut, raisin, pistachio, vanilla, cream):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, raisin, pistachio, vanilla, cream. 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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