Name: Plum Ice Cream
Ingredients: 1 gallon cream; 1 ¾ pounds sugar; 8 ounces crushed fruit or 3 pints very ripe wild goose plums

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 ↓

Plum Ice Cream

Ingredients

1 gallon cream
1 ¾ pounds sugar
8 ounces crushed fruit or 3 pints very ripe wild goose plums

Directions

Prepare

Press the plums through a fine sieve to extract the juice.
Combine the cream and sugar in a large bowl.

Make and freeze

Add the plum juice to the cream mixture and stir well.
Do not add any coloring; the natural color is preferred.
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).
Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,313 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Cream + plumtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together369 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream: Provides fat that gives the ice cream its rich, smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Plums: Supply the fruit flavor and juice that gives the ice cream its plum taste.