Name: Ratafia Cream Ice
Ingredients: 1 oz. bitter almonds; 1 teaspoon water; 2 oz. lump sugar; 1 ⅓ cups cream (1 teacupful + 1 quart)

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 ↓

Ratafia Cream Ice

Ingredients

1 oz. bitter almonds
1 teaspoon water
2 oz. lump sugar
1 ⅓ cups cream (1 teacupful + 1 quart)

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

Blanch the bitter almonds and beat them with water in a mortar.
Rub the paste with lump sugar and simmer with ⅓ cup of cream for 10 minutes.

Make the ice cream

Add this mixture to 1 quart of cream and strain it.
Ice the mixture until it reaches the desired consistency.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,130 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bitter almonds: Provide the characteristic ratafia almond flavour that defines the dish.
Lump sugar: Adds sweetness and helps grind the almond paste into a smooth mixture.
Cream: Forms the rich, fatty base that gives the ice cream its smooth texture.