Name: Almond or Walnut Cream
Ingredients: 1 pound ice cream; 299 almonds or ¾ pound picked walnuts; Sugar to taste

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 ↓

Almond or Walnut Cream

Ingredients

1 pound ice cream
299 almonds or ¾ pound picked walnuts
Sugar to taste

Directions

Prepare

Blanch the almonds or walnuts and pound them in a marble mortar to a paste.

Make the ice cream

Mix the nut paste with the ice cream.
Sweeten the mixture to your taste.
Freeze the mixture until firm.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,130 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds or walnuts: Provide the nutty flavour and a rich, fatty texture in the ice cream.
Ice cream: Forms the creamy base that the nut paste is mixed into.
Sugar: Adds sweetness, adjusted to taste.