Name: Cherry Cream Ice
Ingredients: 1 pint custard; 1 lb ripe cherries; 2 oz castor sugar; juice of 1 lemon; 1 tablespoon Kirschwasser or other liqueur; carmine (for color)

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cherry Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

Stone the cherries and crack the stones to remove the kernels.
Place the cherries and kernels in a bowl.
Add the sugar and lemon juice to the bowl. Mix well and let it sit for a few minutes.

Make and freeze the ice cream

Combine the mixture with the custard and liqueur.
Churn in an ice cream maker until smooth and creamy.
Transfer to a container and 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.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Ripe cherries: Provide the main fruit flavor and body of the ice cream.
Castor sugar: Sweetens the mixture and softens the texture of the frozen cherries.
Custard: Forms the creamy base that gives the ice cream its smooth texture.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavor.

“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.