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Dessert

Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from apricots, sugar, cream, ice, and salt.

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

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 ↓

Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pare, stone, and mash the apricots in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the sugar and scalding cream, then strain through a fine sieve.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into a tin with a tight lid.

  2. Place the tin in a tub filled with crushed ice and salt.

  3. Stir the mixture as it thickens around the edges.

  4. Once fully frozen, remove from the tin and place in a mold.

  5. Cover the mold and return it to the ice and salt for 4-5 hours.

  6. Dip the mold in warm water to release the ice cream when 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.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  3. Apricot + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,116 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavor and body to the ice cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture by lowering the freezing point.
Scalding cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stirring as it thickens. Stirring while the mixture freezes at the edges breaks up ice crystals and keeps the texture smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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