Name: Strawberry Ice Cream
Ingredients: 2 quarts strawberries; 2 cups sugar; 1 pint milk; sweet cream (to taste)

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 ↓

Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

2 quarts strawberries
2 cups sugar
1 pint milk
sweet cream (to taste)

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

Wash and mash the strawberries.
Sprinkle 2 cups of sugar over the berries and let them stand until the sugar dissolves.
Squeeze the mixture through a piece of cheesecloth.

Extract the juice

In a separate bowl, pour 1 pint of milk over the leftover mash, stirring well to separate the seeds.
Squeeze the milk mixture through the cheesecloth again.

Finish and freeze

Combine the juice from both steps and add sweet cream to taste.
Freeze the mixture as usual.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Strawberries: Provide the main flavor, color and juice for the base.
Sugar: Sweetens the berries and draws out their juice as it dissolves.
Milk: Rinses the leftover mash to extract more juice and flavor, adding liquid to the base.
Sweet cream: Adds richness and fat, giving the frozen result a smoother texture.

“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.