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Dessert

Apple Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cooked apples, spices, lemon, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, core, and slice the apples.

  2. Place apples in a saucepan with cinnamon, cloves, grated lemon rind, and a little water to prevent burning.

  3. Cook until soft, then rub through a fine sieve.

Make the base

  1. Mix the apple puree with sifted sugar to sweeten and the juice of half a lemon.

  2. Combine with 1½ pints of cream.

Freeze

  1. Freeze 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.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main flavour and body, cooking down into a smooth puree for the base.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cooked apples through a fine sieve. Cooked apple contains fibre and skin that stay grainy if not fully pressed through. A smooth puree gives a silky frozen texture, since large ice crystals and gritty bits are more noticeable in frozen dairy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, cinnamon, clove, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cinnamon, clove, sugar, 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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