Name: Ice Cream
Ingredients: 3 pints sweet cream; 1 pint powdered sugar; 2 egg whites, beaten light; 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla 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

Ingredients

3 pints sweet cream
1 pint powdered sugar
2 egg whites, beaten light
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions

Prepare the mixture

In a large bowl, mix the sweet cream, powdered sugar, beaten egg whites, and vanilla extract thoroughly.

Freeze

Pour the mixture into an ice cream freezer.
Freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

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.

Sugar + vanillatop 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).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla 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

Sweet cream: Provides fat and richness, giving the frozen ice cream a creamy texture.
Powdered sugar: Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the cold cream, while lowering the freezing point for a softer scoop.
Egg whites: Beaten air into the mixture, adding lightness to the finished texture.
Vanilla extract: Adds aroma and flavor to the finished ice 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.