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Dessert

Walnut Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with cream, sugar, egg, and chopped walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Walnut Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. If desired, soak walnut meats in a little sherry wine for 1 hour before freezing.

Make and freeze the ice cream

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg, then add the sugar and cream.

  2. Freeze the mixture until it is firm.

  3. Once frozen, stir in the chopped walnuts.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Walnut + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

  5. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Supplies fat for a rich, smooth texture in the frozen base.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and keeps the frozen texture softer and scoopable.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the mixture into a smooth, cohesive base.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the creamy base.

The step that matters

Stir in the walnuts once frozen. Folding the nuts in while the base is firm but not rock-hard lets them distribute evenly instead of sinking or clumping. Sugar and fat keep the base soft enough to stir, so it should be checked before adding them.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Cocoafits about as well

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