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Dessert

Mint Sundae

A dessert of plain ice cream topped with mint syrup and garnished with mint sprigs and blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mint Sundae

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scoop plain ice cream into a serving dish.

  2. Pour ½ cup of thickened mint syrup over the ice cream.

  3. Garnish with two fresh mint sprigs and a blanched almond.

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 + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Mint + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Syrup + almondtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mint + syruptop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together193 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Plain ice cream
Provides the cold, creamy base whose fat and air give the sundae its body.
Thickened mint syrup
Adds sweetness and mint flavour, and its thickness helps it cling to the ice cream.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, syrup, almond. 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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