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Ratafia Ice Cream

A custard ice cream flavored with ratafias, lemon juice, and a liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ratafia Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Beat the egg yolk in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the cream and new milk, then sweeten to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into a saucepan over low heat with the ratafias.

  4. Stir until it begins to thicken.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool.

Flavour and freeze

  1. Add the strained lemon juice.

  2. Freeze the mixture in the usual way.

  3. Once set, stir in the noyeau, maraschino, or curaçao, and the crushed ratafias.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Egg yolk
Thickens the custard as it heats and adds richness to the ice cream.
Cream
Provides fat for a smooth, rich texture that resists large ice crystals.
New milk
Adds liquid and dairy body, making the base lighter than cream alone.
Ratafias
Infuse almond-like flavour into the warm custard base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the rich dairy.

The step that matters

Stir until it begins to thicken. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, but overheating scrambles them into lumps. Keep the heat low and stir constantly, removing the pan as soon as the custard coats a spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, 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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