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Dessert

Maraschino Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with lemon zest, sugar, egg yolks, cream, and maraschino liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Maraschino Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Grate the rinds of the lemons and mix with sugar by rubbing them together until well combined.

  2. Add the egg yolks and 1 gallon of cream, then heat over a steam bath until hot.

  3. Pour the mixture into a can and add 3 gallons of cream, then freeze.

Add the flavouring and pack

  1. Once frozen, beat the whipped double cream and mix in the Maraschino liqueur.

  2. Combine this with the frozen mixture using a spatula, then transfer to a can and pack.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg yolks
Enrich the custard base and add richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the frozen ice cream soft rather than hard.
Cream
Provides fat that gives the ice cream its rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds the characteristic cherry-almond aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Combining the frozen mixture with the whipped cream. Folding whipped cream into a mixture that is already frozen keeps air in the dessert and avoids melting, so the texture stays light rather than dense or icy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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