Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from strawberries, powdered sugar, lemon juice, cochineal, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Strawberry Ice Cream

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Carefully pick and wash the strawberries.

  2. Using a wooden spoon, rub the strawberries through a fine sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix in the powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Add a few drops of prepared cochineal for color.

  3. Once the sugar is dissolved, taste and adjust sweetness if necessary.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture 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.

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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavor and fruit pulp that gives the ice cream its body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves easily into the fruit pulp.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the frozen ice cream smooth and rich.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar before tasting. Sugar dissolves slowly in cold fruit pulp, and freezing dulls sweetness, so tasting before the sugar has fully dissolved gives a misleading read and an ice cream that is too sweet or too tart once frozen.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More strawberry ice cream recipes

Frozen 4Crushed 3 See all 208 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes