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Dessert

Ice Creams

A frozen dessert made from blanched kernels, apricots, lemon juice, cream, and ice, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,098 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ice Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Blanch and pound the kernels until fine.

  2. Combine the kernels with the apricots and boil for a few minutes until melted.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a basin.

  4. Add the juice of one lemon and one pint of cream to the mixture.

Freeze

  1. Place the mixture in a freezing pot and cover it.

  2. Set the pot in a pail with pounded ice underneath and around it, adding plenty of salt.

  3. Turn the pot for a few minutes, then scrape the sides with an ice paddle.

  4. Continue until the mixture is smooth and thick.

  5. Transfer to a mold in another pail with ice underneath and over it, adding more salt.

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. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,116 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Kernels
Provide the main body and starchy thickness of the custard-like base.
Apricots
Add fruit flavor, sweetness, and acidity while softening into the base when boiled.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the frozen mixture smooth and rich rather than icy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apricot flavor and balances sweetness.

The step that matters

Scraping the sides while turning the pot. Scraping keeps ice crystals from building up on the cold walls, so the mixture freezes smooth and thick instead of grainy. Stopping too early leaves it icy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, 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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