Name: French Ice Creams
Ingredients: 2 cups vanilla ice cream; 2 cups chocolate ice cream; 2 cups strawberry ice cream; 2 cups coffee ice cream; 2 cups pistachio ice cream; 2 cups raspberry ice cream; 2 cups lemon ice cream; 2 cups peach ice cream

Why it works: Vanilla and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,385 recipes. Both carry p-vinylguaiacol, which smells spicy, fruity. The science ↓

French Ice Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Scoop 2 cups of each flavor of ice cream into a serving dish.
Serve immediately or store in the freezer until ready to serve.

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.

Vanilla + strawberrytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,385 recipes

Shared aroma: p-vinylguaiacol (spicy, fruity).
Strawberry + raspberrytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together815 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, sweet).
Vanilla + raspberrytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together950 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
Chocolate + coffeetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).
Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,020 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, cream, chocolate, strawberry, coffee, pistachio, raspberry):

Cherryfits better
Blackberryfits better
Peachfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, cream, chocolate, strawberry, coffee, pistachio, raspberry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.