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Dessert

Strawberry Cream Ice

A frozen dessert made from strawberries, custard or cream, sugar, lemon juice, and optional food coloring.

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 ↓

Strawberry Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Pick the strawberries and sprinkle with a little sugar.

  2. Let them sit for an hour.

  3. Rub the strawberries through a fine sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix with an equal measure of sweetened custard or cream.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or a pinch of dissolved citric acid.

  3. Add food coloring if desired.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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).

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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavor and fruit pulp that gives the ice cream its color and taste.
Custard or cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the frozen mixture a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and softens the texture by lowering the freezing point.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Rubbing the strawberries through a fine sieve. Pushing the fruit through a fine sieve removes seeds and fibrous bits, leaving a smooth pulp. Coarse pieces can freeze into icy grit and spoil the texture.

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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