Name: Chocolate Fruit Ice Cream
Ingredients: ½ pound assorted French candied or preserved fruits, cut into small pieces; 1 chocolate cream; whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla; chopped almonds, dried to a light-brown color; chopped pistachios

Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chocolate Fruit Ice Cream

Ingredients

½ pound assorted French candied or preserved fruits, cut into small pieces
1 chocolate cream
whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla
chopped almonds, dried to a light-brown color
chopped pistachios

Directions

Prepare a chocolate cream and freeze it until set.
Fold in the assorted fruits and mix well.
Transfer the mixture into a melon-shaped mold.
Once ready to serve, turn the cream onto a platter.
Surround the cream with whipped cream and sprinkle with chopped almonds and pistachios.

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.

Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together693 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,961 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,020 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Vanilla + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together407 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

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

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, cream, almond, pistachio):

Vanillathe original
Coconutfits about as well
Avocadofits about as well
Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, cream, almond, pistachio. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.