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Dessert

Washington Fruit Ice Cream

A fruit ice cream made with almonds, raisins, currants, citron, vanilla, cream, sugar, nutmeg, wine, egg yolks, preserved fruit, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Washington Fruit Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds in scalding water.

  2. Place the blanched almonds in cold water.

  3. Pound each almond in a mortar until smooth, adding drops of rose-water or lemon juice to prevent oiling.

  4. Mix the raisins, currants, and chopped citron, dredging them with flour.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with the split vanilla bean until flavored.

  2. Strain out the vanilla bean from the milk.

  3. Combine the vanilla milk with the cream.

  4. Stir in the powdered sugar and grated nutmeg.

  5. Add the pounded almonds and the wine-glass of liquor.

  6. Beat the egg yolks until light and smooth.

  7. Stir the beaten yolks into the mixture.

  8. Simmer the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly.

  9. Remove the mixture just before boiling to avoid curdling.

  10. Stir in the fruit and let cool.

  11. Add the preserved strawberries, apricots, peaches, limes, and any other sweetmeats.

Freeze and serve

  1. Gently fold in the whipped cream.

  2. Pour the mixture into a large melon mold that opens in the middle.

  3. Freeze the mixture for 4 hours.

  4. Turn out the ice cream when ready to serve.

  5. Present the ice cream on a glass dish.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it, giving a smooth, rich texture when gently heated.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth, creamy body.
Whipped cream
Folded in to add air and lightness, softening the frozen texture.
Sweet almonds
Pounded into the base to add nutty flavor and body to the custard.
Powdered loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps keep the frozen texture soft rather than icy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the vanilla flavor.

The step that matters

Remove the mixture just before boiling. Egg yolks thicken when heated but curdle if they get too hot, so the custard must be taken off the heat as soon as it thickens.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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