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Dessert

Strawberry Cream Ice

A frozen dessert made from strawberries, sugar, cochineal, lemon juice, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Strawberry Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the purée

  1. Remove the stalks from the strawberries and rub them through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add the cochineal and lemon juice; this should measure ½ pint.

Freeze and serve

  1. Fold in the whipped cream and freeze the mixture.

  2. Pack tightly in a wetted ice mold.

  3. Return to the ice 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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon 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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and most of the body of the ice cream.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and air, giving a light, creamy texture after freezing.
Cochineal
Colours the mixture a bright red.

The step that matters

Pack tightly in a wetted ice mold. Pressing the mixture firmly removes trapped air pockets, so the frozen ice cream holds a smooth, dense shape and slices cleanly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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