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Dessert

Lemon Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made by mixing cream, sugar, lemon zest and juice, then freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemon Ice Cream

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 ↓

Lemon Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cream and sugar.

  2. Grate the lemons and press the juice and gratings through a sieve into the cream mixture.

  3. Add a few drops of lemon oil and yellow food coloring if desired.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve to remove any solids.

Freeze

  1. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon 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

Cream
Provides fat for a rich, smooth texture and a creamy mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Lemons
Supply acidity and bright citrus flavor from the juice and aromatic oils in the gratings.
Lemon oil
Intensifies the lemon aroma in a concentrated way.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a fine sieve. Straining removes bits of zest, pith and undissolved solids that would otherwise leave a gritty or rough texture in the frozen ice cream.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar. 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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