Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made from cream, lemon and orange zest, sugar, and lemon juice, churned into ice cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 the juice

  1. Grate the yellow rind of the lemons and orange, then squeeze out the juice.

  2. Combine the juice with the sugar and let it stand in a cool place for 1 hour.

Make the base

  1. Scald the cream and let it cool.

  2. Once cold, partly freeze the cream.

  3. Add the dissolved juice and sugar mixture to the cream.

Churn

  1. Turn the crank rapidly for a few minutes and finish churning like other ice creams.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Cream + orangetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,170 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 body, giving the ice cream its rich, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen ice cream softer and easier to scoop.
Lemons
Supply acidity and the bright flavour of the juice, with aroma from the rind.
Orange
Adds citrus aroma from its rind and extra juice for tartness.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar in the juice before adding it to the cream. Sugar dissolved in juice blends evenly into the cream instead of sitting as grains. Acid added to dairy can thicken or curdle it, so adding the mixture gradually to partly frozen cream helps keep it smooth.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, 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.

More lemon ice cream recipes

Candy 4 See all 95 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes