Name: Ginger Ice Cream
Ingredients: 8 egg yolks; 1 teaspoon orange extract; 1½ cups sugar; 1 cup preserved ginger, finely chopped; 2 cups boiling milk; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 tablespoon ginger syrup

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ginger Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the egg yolks to a thick cream.
Add the sugar and remaining ingredients in the order given.
Chop the ginger finely before adding.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, orange, sugar, milk, lemon, syrup):

Cinnamonfits better
Gingerthe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Peppermintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, orange, sugar, milk, lemon, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.