Name: Tuttt Frutti Ice Cream
Ingredients: 2 quarts vanilla ice cream, partly frozen; 1 pint candied fruit, cut in small pieces (such as lemon and orange peel, cherries, and citron); water (for cooking fruit)

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 ↓

Tuttt Frutti Ice Cream

Ingredients

2 quarts vanilla ice cream, partly frozen
1 pint candied fruit, cut in small pieces (such as lemon and orange peel, cherries, and citron)
water (for cooking fruit)

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Cook the candied fruit in a small quantity of water for about 10 minutes.

Finish the ice cream

Add the cooked fruit to the partly frozen vanilla ice cream.
Stir well to combine and finish freezing the ice cream.
Pack down until ready to serve.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,371 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,961 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,301 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Cream + orangetop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,170 recipes

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

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Vanilla ice cream: Provides the creamy base and sweetness that the fruit is folded into.
Candied fruit: Adds chewy texture and concentrated sweet, aromatic flavor throughout the ice cream.