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Dessert

Frozen Cherries

A chilled dessert made from cherries, cream, milk, and sugar, frozen into a custard-like consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Frozen Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Mince the cherries finely and mix with powdered sugar.

  2. Let the mixture stand for over an hour.

Make the custard base

  1. Scald the milk and granulated sugar in a double boiler, then let it cool.

  2. Add the cream to the cooled milk mixture.

  3. If a bright red color is desired, add cochineal.

Freeze and serve

  1. Freeze the mixture immediately, then repack for an hour to ripen.

  2. When ready to serve, stir in the cherries.

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

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

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 fruit flavor and texture, and their juice adds moisture and sweetness.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture that stays soft when frozen.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the sweetness and body of the dish.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen custard softer.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves readily into the cherries, sweetening them and drawing out their juice.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture immediately. Freezing promptly after combining limits the growth of large ice crystals, keeping the custard smooth rather than grainy. Repacking afterward allows the frozen mixture to firm and ripen evenly.

“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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