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Ice Cream

A lemon ice cream made by mixing lemon juice, sugar, and cream, then freezing with salt and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Ice Cream

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 ↓

Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Strain the juice of the lemons into a bowl and mix in enough crushed sugar to absorb it.

  2. Gradually stir in the cream until well combined.

Freeze

  1. If using a proper freezer, freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

  2. If not, place the cream in a tin pail and set it in a larger container filled with coarse salt and ice.

  3. When the cream starts to freeze around the edges, stir it well and shake the pail until fully frozen.

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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lemons
Provide the juice that gives the ice cream its sharp, bright acidity.
Crushed sugar
Absorbs the lemon juice and adds sweetness to balance the acidity.
Cream
Supplies fat that makes the frozen ice cream rich and smooth in texture.
Coarse salt and ice
Lowers the temperature of the surrounding ice bath so the cream freezes without a machine.

The step that matters

Stirring as the cream begins to freeze. Stirring when ice crystals first form at the edges breaks them up, keeping the texture smooth instead of icy and grainy as the mixture sets.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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