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Dessert

Frozen Dessert

A frozen dessert made with a sugar syrup, egg yolks, almond extract, macaroons, almonds, candied cherries, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Frozen Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes to make syrup.

  2. Stir in beaten egg yolks and almond extract.

  3. Place in a double boiler and stir until slightly thickened.

Assemble and freeze

  1. Fold in crushed macaroons, chopped almonds, and soaked candied cherries.

  2. Gently fold in whipped cream.

  3. Pour mixture into a mold, pack in fine ice, and freeze for 3 hours.

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

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

  2. Almond + sherrytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the syrup base and add richness when gently cooked in a double boiler.
Whipped cream
Adds air and a light, creamy texture to the frozen dessert.
Macaroons
Add crumbly texture and an almond-like sweetness to the mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the frozen texture soft rather than icy.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks over the double boiler until slightly thickened. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but too much heat can scramble them. Gentle, steady stirring keeps the custard smooth before it is folded with the cream.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Cocoafits less well
  4. Peasfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, sherry, wine, 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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