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Dessert

Maraschino Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with cream, sugar, lemon juice, and maraschino liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Maraschino Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix lemon juice and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Stir the mixture into the cream.

  3. Freeze the cream mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Once frozen, stir in the maraschino.

  2. Repack the ice cream and let it sit for 2 hours.

  3. Serve on fancy plates with a few cherries in the center of each.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon 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

Cream
Provides fat that makes the ice cream rich and creamy in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Maraschino
Adds cherry flavor and aroma to the finished ice cream.

The step that matters

Once frozen, stir in the maraschino. Adding liquid to frozen cream can make it icy and uneven. Stirring it in once the mixture is frozen but still workable helps distribute the flavor without melting and refreezing the base.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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.

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