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Dessert

Plum Pudding Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made from heavy cream, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, raisins, nuts, figs, and spices, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 324 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Plum Pudding Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, combine the cream, sugar, vanilla, and grated chocolate.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Before it cools, stir in the chopped raisins, nuts, and figs until well combined.

  4. Freeze the mixture until solid.

Add the spiced brandy

  1. Soak the cinnamon and cloves in the brandy.

  2. Mix the soaked spices into the frozen cream.

  3. Pack the mixture solidly into square tins.

Serve

  1. To serve, cut into slices and top each piece with a tablespoon of whipped cream.

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. Vanilla + figtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together324 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

Heavy cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the frozen dessert its creamy, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and lowers the freezing point, keeping it softer and less icy.
Grated sweet chocolate
Adds fat and deep flavor that blends into the cream as it freezes.
Brandy
Adds alcohol, which keeps the frozen mixture softer and contributes aroma.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness among the frozen cream.
Figs
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness among the frozen cream.

The step that matters

Stirring in the raisins, nuts, and figs before the mixture cools. While the cream is still liquid, the chopped pieces can be distributed evenly. Once it has frozen, they would sit unevenly or clump, leaving some spoonfuls bare and others crowded.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, raisin, fig, brandy):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, raisin, fig, brandy. 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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