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Dessert

Strawberry Cream Ice

A chilled dessert made by blending strawberries with custard or cream, lemon juice, and sugar, then freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Strawberry Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Pick the strawberries and sprinkle with a little sugar.

  2. Let them sit for 1 hour.

  3. Rub the strawberries through a fine sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the strawberry puree with an equal measure of sweetened custard or cream.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or dissolve ¼ teaspoon of citric acid in the mixture. Add color if desired.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture.

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

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

  2. Cream + strawberrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + strawberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Lemon and sugar 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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavor and, once pureed, the fruity color and body of the ice cream.
Custard or cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens the frozen texture by lowering its freezing point.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Rub the strawberries through a fine sieve. Straining removes seeds and fibrous pulp, leaving a smooth puree that will not feel gritty in the frozen ice cream.

Swap the strawberry

The recipe marks strawberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, lemon, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

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

More strawberry ice cream recipes

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