Name: Ratifea Ice Cream
Ingredients: ¼ pound ratifeas; 1½ cups cream; ⅓ cup white wine; sifted lump sugar to taste

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 ↓

Ratifea Ice Cream

Ingredients

¼ pound ratifeas
1½ cups cream
⅓ cup white wine
sifted lump sugar to taste

Directions

Prepare

Rub the ratifeas quite finely and sift them through a fine sieve.
Mix the sifted ratifeas with the cream and white wine.
Add sifted lump sugar if the mixture is not sweet enough.

Freeze

Freeze the mixture according to your ice cream maker'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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,760 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,586 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Ratifeas: Provide the main flavour, which is carried through the cream base once finely ground.
Cream: Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
White wine: Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the flavour of the cream base.
Lump sugar: Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer when frozen.

“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.