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Dessert

Cherry Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cherries, cream, sugar, lemon juice, and optional cochineal and berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cherry Ice Cream

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cherry Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherry pulp

  1. Pound the cherries with the stones in a mortar.

  2. Add a few ripe gooseberries or currants if desired.

  3. Pass the pulp through a sieve.

Make and freeze the ice cream

  1. Add the cream, sugar, and lemon juice to the cherry pulp.

  2. Mix well and freeze.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cherries
Provide the main flavour and the fruit pulp that gives the ice cream its colour and taste.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the ice cream rich and smooth in texture.
Sugar or syrup
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavour and balances the sweetness.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, lemon. 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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