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Ratifia Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with ratafias and maraschino.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Ratifia Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream, milk, sugar, egg yolks, and 2 ounces of ratafias.

  2. Heat gently, stirring until it thickens like custard.

  3. Remove from heat and add lemon juice; let cool.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze the mixture until partially set.

  2. Rub the remaining 2 ounces of ratafias through a sieve and add to the frozen mixture.

  3. Stir in the glass of noyau or maraschino and freeze until firm.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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
Adds richness and fat, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard base as they heat and give the ice cream a richer texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer when frozen.
Ratafias
Provide the almond-like flavour that defines the ice cream.
Noyau or maraschino
Adds a concentrated liqueur aroma and flavour to the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Heat gently and stir until the custard thickens. Egg yolks set at a moderate temperature. Overheating scrambles them into lumps, while underheating leaves the base thin, so the ice cream turns out grainy or runny.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, sugar, egg. 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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