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Lemon Ice Cream

A citrus ice cream made with lemon rind, lemon juice, orange juice, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Lemon Ice Cream

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Lemon Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Mix the juice of the orange and the juice and rind of the lemons with the sugar.

  2. Set the mixture in a cold place for 1 hour.

Make the base

  1. Scald the cream in a double boiler and let it cool.

  2. When the cream is cold, partly freeze it.

Finish freezing

  1. Add the mixture of juice and sugar (ensure the sugar is dissolved) and finish freezing by turning the crank rapidly for 5 minutes.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Cream + orangetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Cream
Provides fat and richness, and freezes into a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream soft and scoopable.
Lemons
Add sharp acidity and aroma, with the rind carrying most of the citrus oils.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour with mild acidity.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully before the final freezing. Sugar that is not dissolved stays as crystals, which can leave the finished ice cream grainy and unevenly sweet. Stirring until clear ensures the mixture blends smoothly into the cream.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Limefits less well

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