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Tutti-frutti Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream with crystallized fruit, lemon, and pale sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Tutti-frutti Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare and half-freeze a custard as for Delmonico Ice Cream.

  2. Beat in 1 pint of crystallized fruit, and if desired, minced citron, raisins, and currants.

  3. Add the juice and grated peel of 1 lemon and ⅓ cup of pale sherry.

  4. Replace the top and freeze until solid.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Raisin + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Custard
Forms the creamy base that the fruit and flavourings are folded into.
Crystallized fruit
Adds sweetness and chewy bits of fruit throughout the frozen cream.
Pale sherry
Adds aroma and flavour, and its alcohol keeps the frozen texture softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit and custard.

The step that matters

Freeze the custard only half before adding the fruit. If the base is fully frozen before the fruit goes in, the fruit cannot be mixed evenly and the ice cream becomes hard and icy. Partial freezing keeps it spoonable so the fruit distributes well.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, currant, lemon, sherry):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, currant, lemon, sherry. 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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