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Dessert

Strawberry Macaroon Ice

A frozen dessert made with strawberry puree, heavy cream, and macaroon crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Strawberry Macaroon Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Hull the strawberries, sprinkle with sugar, and let stand for 2 hours.

  2. Mash the strawberries and squeeze through cheesecloth.

  3. Add the juice of the lemon and a pinch of salt to the strawberry juice.

Assemble the mold

  1. Pour the mixture into a quart brick mold, adding enough cold water to half fill the mold.

  2. Beat the cream and milk together until stiff, then add sugar, macaroon crumbs, vanilla, and a pinch of salt.

  3. Pour the cream mixture over the strawberry juice until it overflows.

  4. Cover the mold with buttered paper and a tin cover.

Freeze

  1. Pack the mold in equal parts of ice and salt, and let stand for 3 hours.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  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. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and the juice that forms the base of the ice.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture once whipped and frozen.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps keep the frozen mixture from freezing too hard.
Macaroon crumbs
Add an almond-like aroma and a chewy, crumbly texture to the cream layer.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the cream and milk until stiff. Whipping traps air in the cream, which gives the frozen layer a light texture. Under-whipped cream freezes dense, and over-whipped cream can turn grainy or buttery.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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