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Dessert

Plombiere Cream Ice

A chilled dessert made from cream, sugar, almonds, apricot jam, and eggs, folded with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Plombiere Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream or milk, caster sugar, ground almonds, pounded bitter almonds, apricot jam diluted with water, and egg yolks.

  2. Place the pan on the heat, stirring continuously until the mixture thickens.

  3. Remove from heat, stir for a few minutes, and strain through a fine sieve into a basin.

Freeze and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a freezer, twisting the pan vigorously and occasionally stirring with a spatula.

  2. When nearly stiff, add the egg whites and mix well, then fold in the whipped cream.

  3. Serve in molds or on a dish, layering with apricot jam and surrounding with almond cakes.

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. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Orange + apricottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream or milk
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body to the frozen mixture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and help give the frozen cream a smooth, rich texture.
Ground almonds
Add body and nutty flavour and help thicken the base.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point for a softer texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into the nearly frozen mixture to add lightness and airy texture.
Well-whipped cream
Folded in to add air and lightness, keeping the frozen cream soft.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard. Stir constantly over moderate heat until the egg yolks thicken the base. If overheated, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture, which is why straining afterward matters.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, almond, apricot, egg. 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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