Name: Ice Cream
Ingredients: 1 quart cream; 1 bottle vanilla; sugar to taste; 1 cake ice; rock salt (or any kind of salt)

Why it works: Vanilla and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Ice Cream

8 pupils (4 pairs)

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pour the cream into bowls, 1 pint in each, for 8 pupils (4 pairs).
Place the vanilla bottle within easy reach of the pupils.
Crush the cake of ice in an old bag or box.
Place the rock salt in large bowls.
Cover the bottom and sides of a dishpan with paper to protect it from ice and salt.

Make the ice cream

Each pupil at the table should add their ice and salt to the dishpan and prepare their own portion of cream.

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.

Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,301 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cream: Forms the rich, smooth body of the ice cream as it freezes.
Ice: Chills the mixture so it freezes; crushed ice gives more surface contact.
Rock salt: Lowers the melting point of the ice, making it cold enough to freeze the cream.

“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.