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Dessert

A New Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from melon pulp, sweetened cream, sugar, lemon juice, and optional egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A New Ice Cream

1 melon for every 2 servings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melon

  1. Cut the melons in half and remove the seeds.

  2. Use a silver spoon to scrape out the soft pulp and measure it.

  3. Sweeten the melon pulp to taste.

Make the ice cream

  1. Freeze twice the amount of sweetened cream as melon pulp.

  2. When the cream is half frozen, add the melon pulp and mix well.

  3. Freeze until very hard.

Serve

  1. Serve in rounded pieces cut from the melon rind.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Melon + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Nutmeg + melontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetened cream
Adds fat and richness, and helps give the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Melon pulp
Provides the main flavor and moisture of the ice cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the melon flavor.

The step that matters

Add the melon pulp when the cream is half frozen. Partly frozen cream has enough body to hold the pulp evenly. If the cream is fully liquid, the pulp can sink or separate, and if it is fully frozen, the pulp will not mix in well.

Swap the melon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Melonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, cream, sugar, lemon, egg. 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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