Skip to main content
Dessert

Brandy-peach Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with peaches, brandy, heavy cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Brandy-peach Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Pour off part of the syrup from the can of peaches.

  2. Pour enough brandy over the peaches to thoroughly flavor them and let them stand for several hours.

  3. Chop the peaches finely.

Make and freeze

  1. Sweeten the peaches to taste, then add the heavy cream.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

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. Peach + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together339 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

  4. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor, natural sweetness and soft pieces throughout the ice cream.
Brandy
Adds aroma and depth to the peaches and softens the frozen texture.
Heavy cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.

The step that matters

Freezing the mixture. Alcohol and sugar both lower the freezing point, so the mixture sets softer and more slowly than plain cream. Too much brandy or sugar can stop it from firming up at all, so sweeten to taste and flavor with restraint.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, cream, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesPeach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipes