Name: Apple Ice Cream
Ingredients: 1 pint whole milk; 2 egg whites; ¾ cup vinegar; 1 cup apples; 1 teaspoon vanilla; 2 egg yolks; 1 cup whipped cream

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Apple Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, cream the egg yolks with part of the sugar.
Add the creamed yolks to the milk along with the remaining sugar and vanilla.
Place the mixture in a freezer and freeze until mushy.
Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and the cooked apples.
When nearly frozen, add the whipped cream and mix well.

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.

Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,501 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,301 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Vinegar + appletop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,884 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, vinegar, vanilla, cream):

Strawberryfits better
Raspberryfits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, vinegar, vanilla, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.