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Dessert

Bisque Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with cream, macaroons, ladyfingers, sugar, kisses, vanilla, caramel, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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, kisses, and ladyfingers.

  2. Pass the pounded mixture through a colander.

Make the custard base

  1. Heat half the cream in a double boiler until scalded.

  2. Stir in the sugar until it boils.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat.

  4. Add the remaining cream.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Freeze and ripen

  1. Pour the mixture into an ice cream freezer.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

  3. Mix in the vanilla, caramel, pounded cakes, and sherry if desired.

  4. Beat until smooth.

  5. Cover the mixture and let ripen for 2 to 3 hours before serving.

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, fat, and a smooth, creamy body in the frozen dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.
Macaroons
Add body, crumbly texture, and sweet flavor to the base.
Ladyfinger cakes
Stale cakes absorb liquid and add structure and flavor to the mixture.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the sweet, rich flavor.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool. Cooling the base fully before freezing helps it chill quickly in the freezer, which keeps ice crystals small and the texture smooth.

“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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