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Dessert

Bisque Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with cream, macaroons, stale sponge cake, sugar, vanilla, caramel, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bisque Ice Cream

Why it works: Vanilla and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Bisque Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the macaroons and stale sponge cake in a colander.

Make the base

  1. In a boiler, bring 1 pint of cream to a boil, then stir in the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool, then add the remaining cream and freeze.

Finish

  1. Once frozen, mix in the vanilla, caramel, and pound cake, and beat until smooth.

  2. Pack the ice cream as directed.

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. Vanilla + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

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

  5. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

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

Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Macaroons
Add crumbly texture and body to the frozen custard base.
Stale sponge cake
Adds a soft, tender crumb and body to the ice cream.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully in the boiled cream. Sugar must dissolve completely into the hot cream; undissolved crystals can leave a grainy texture once the mixture is frozen.

“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.

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