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Dessert

Cherry Ice with Nut Cream

A chilled dessert of sweet cherry ice with a nut cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,703 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cherry Ice with Nut Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherry ice

  1. Remove the pits from the cherries.

  2. Boil the cherry pulp with some of the sugar and water to extract flavor.

  3. Strain the boiled pulp, then strain the cherry juice into a freezer.

  4. Combine the cherry juice with the remaining water and sugar.

  5. Freeze the mixture.

Make the nut cream

  1. Pick over the nut meats to remove any shell fragments.

  2. Pound the nut meats with part of the sugar and a few tablespoons of milk.

  3. Mix the nut pulp with the remaining milk, sugar, and burnt sugar for coloring.

  4. Strain the nut mixture into a freezer.

  5. Freeze the nut cream.

  6. Beat the frozen nut cream smooth with a spatula.

Assemble and serve

  1. Line molds with cherry ice.

  2. Fill the center of the molds with nut cream.

  3. Serve the ice as a border in glasses with cream in the center.

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. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + meattop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Sweet cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and the color of the cherry ice.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays soft rather than rock-hard.
Pecan or hickory nut meats
Supply the rich, nutty flavor and body of the nut cream once pounded smooth.
Rich milk or cream
Adds fat and creaminess, giving the nut cream a smooth, tender texture.
Burnt sugar
Adds a deep brown color and a slightly bittersweet caramel aroma to the nut cream.

The step that matters

Beat the frozen nut cream smooth with a spatula. Freezing forms ice crystals that make the cream grainy. Beating it while partly frozen breaks up those crystals and restores a smooth, creamy texture.

“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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