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Dessert

Walnut Cream Ice

A chilled walnut ice dessert made with milk, walnuts, sugar, meringue, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Walnut Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnut milk

  1. Pound the walnut kernels with orange-flower water and a little milk.

  2. Mix the walnut mixture with the remaining milk and strain through a fine sieve into a bowl.

Freeze and finish

  1. In a freezer, combine the walnut milk pulp with the sugar and freeze, stirring until stiff.

  2. Gradually fold in the meringue and then the whipped cream until well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture into a mold and freeze until set.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut kernels
Provide the main flavour and body of the ice cream base.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point for a softer texture.
Double cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg whites
Form a meringue that lightens the mixture and adds air.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the walnut flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually fold in the meringue and then the whipped cream. Folding gently keeps the air in the meringue and whipped cream. Adding them all at once or stirring hard knocks air out, leaving a dense, less light ice cream.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, walnut, sugar, cream, 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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