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Dessert

Avocado Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with avocado, vanilla, and almond extract, topped with a green maraschino cherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Avocado and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Avocado Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, egg yolks, and ½ cup sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.

Add the avocado

  1. Mash the avocados with 1 tablespoon sugar.

  2. Mix in almond extract.

  3. Fold the avocado mixture into the custard.

Freeze and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker.

  2. Freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

  3. Serve in mounds, topped with a green maraschino cherry.

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.

  1. Avocado + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Avocado + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and add richness to the base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the yolks thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Avocados
Provide creamy body and a smooth, fatty texture to the ice cream.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Stir constantly over medium heat and stop once the custard coats a spoon.

Swap the avocado

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Avocadothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, almond, vanilla. 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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