Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with preserved ginger, sugar, milk, lemon juice, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Ginger Ice Cream

Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Bruise the preserved ginger in a mortar with the milk and strain it through a sieve.

  2. Add the sugar and the juice of the two lemons to the mixture.

  3. Mix in the cream thoroughly.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze the mixture.

  2. When the mixture is half frozen, add about 2 oz. of finely chopped ginger.

  3. Continue freezing.

  4. Mold and turn out as directed.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Preserved ginger
Supplies the main flavor and aroma, and the chopped pieces add texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen ice cream softer and easier to scoop.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and the ginger flavor.
Cream
Its fat gives the ice cream a smooth, rich texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the ginger flavor into the mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the chopped ginger at half frozen. Stirring in the ginger once the mixture is partly frozen lets the pieces spread evenly. If added to a liquid base, they sink; if added to a solid, they stay in clumps.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Peppermintfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes