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Dessert

Lemon Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with cream, milk, sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons and squeeze out the juice.

  2. Mix the lemon rind, lemon juice, and sugar together.

Make the base

  1. Bring the milk and cream to a boil, then remove from heat.

  2. Dissolve some of the sugar in the milk and cream before adding the juice to prevent curdling.

Cool and freeze

  1. Let the mixture cool, then freeze.

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

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

  4. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

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

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture that resists ice crystals.
Milk
Supplies liquid and milk solids that give body and a creamy base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture by lowering its freezing point.
Lemons
Grated rind gives aroma and the juice adds sharp acidity.
Orange juice
Adds extra citrus acidity and fruity flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolving sugar in the milk and cream before adding the juice. Acid from citrus juice can make milk proteins clump and curdle, especially in hot dairy. Dissolving sugar into the milk and cream first helps spread the acid out and keeps the base smooth.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, 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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