Name: Iced Ratafia Cream
Ingredients: ¼ ounce bitter almonds; 1 teaspoon water; 2 ounces lump sugar; 1½ cups cream; 1 quart cream

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 ↓

Iced Ratafia Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

Blanch the bitter almonds and beat them with water in a marble mortar.
Rub the paste with lump sugar and simmer with 1½ cups of cream for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

Combine this mixture with 1 quart of cream and strain it.
Ice the mixture before serving.

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 bitter almond flavour and aroma that define the cream.
Lump sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the almonds.
Cream: Gives the dish its rich body, smooth texture and mouthfeel.