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Dessert

Lemon Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, cream, and optionally egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Lemon 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 ↓

Lemon Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grate the yellow rind of the lemons and mix it with the sugar.

  2. Strain the juice of one lemon over the sugar mixture.

  3. Add the cream and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  4. Freeze the mixture until solid.

  5. If using milk, enrich it by stirring in the egg yolks and heat it until boiling.

  6. Let the mixture cool before adding the lemon juice.

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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
Lemon rind adds aroma and the juice adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Cream
Provides fat, which makes the ice cream rich and creamy rather than icy.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help emulsify the milk, giving a smooth, custard-like texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the lemon juice. Acid added to hot dairy can cause it to curdle or separate. Cooling the base first keeps it smooth and stable as it freezes.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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