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Dessert

Italian Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with lemon zest, lemon juice, cream, brandy, nectar, and sugar.

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 ↓

Italian Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Grate the zest of the lemons into a bowl with some sugar.

  2. Juice the lemons and add the juice to the bowl.

  3. Mix in the cream, brandy, nectar, and remaining sugar.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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 + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Lemons
Provide acidity and fragrant aroma from the zest and juice.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a smooth, creamy texture.
Brandy
Adds flavor and alcohol, which keeps the frozen dessert softer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the texture softer.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture until solid. Sugar and alcohol lower the freezing point, so the mixture freezes more slowly and softer than plain water. Freezing it fully ensures it sets firmly as a dessert.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, brandy, 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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