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Dessert

Sunday Dessert

A chilled custard dessert made with cream, sugar, eggs, and cherries soaked in rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sunday Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine the cream and sugar in a double boiler and cook until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then add them to the cream mixture.

Finish and freeze

  1. Add the soaked cherries to the mixture and stir well.

  2. Chill the mixture until cold, then freeze until firm.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cream + rumtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together842 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 fat and richness, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Eggs
Add richness and help emulsify the base, contributing to a smooth, velvety texture.
Cherries soaked in rum
Add fruit flavor and moisture, with rum adding aroma and limiting hard ice crystals.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture until cold before freezing. A thoroughly chilled base freezes faster in the machine or freezer, forming smaller ice crystals and a smoother texture. Adding warm mixture to freezing conditions slows setting and can leave a grainy result.

“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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