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Dessert

Bisque Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made with heavy cream, macaroons, ladyfingers, sugar, vanilla, caramel, and optional sherry, finished with sea salt ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the custard base

  1. Pound the macaroons, kisses, and lady fingers through a colander.

  2. Bring 1 pint of cream to a boil in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in the sugar until dissolved.

  4. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  5. Add the remaining cream to the mixture.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Freeze and ripen

  1. Pour the mixture into an ice cream freezer.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

  3. Once frozen, mix in the vanilla, caramel, and pounded cakes, along with sherry if using.

  4. Beat the mixture until smooth.

  5. Drain the water from the freezer tub.

  6. Add more salt and ice.

  7. Remove the dasher.

  8. Cover the tub.

  9. Let it ripen for 3 to 4 hours.

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

Heavy cream
Provides the fat and body that make the ice cream rich and smooth.
Macaroons
Add body and a sweet almond-like flavor to the pounded crumbs.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Lady fingers
Stale sponge cake crumbs that add texture and absorb flavor from the base.
Kisses
Stale meringue-type cookies that add sweetness and a light crumb texture.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until smooth. Beating during freezing breaks up forming ice crystals and incorporates air, so the ice cream stays smooth rather than icy.

“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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