Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cherry Cream Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cherries
Stone the cherries and crack the stones to remove the kernels.
Place both the cherries and kernels in a bowl, then add the sugar, lemon juice, and Kirschwasser.
Cover and let the mixture stand for 1 hour.
Cook and strain
Pour the mixture into a saucepan, add 1 pint of water, and cook until the cherries are tender.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.
Freeze
Add the prepared custard and a few drops of carmine, then freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 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
- Cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavour, and their juice and pulp give the ice cream its colour and body.
- Custard
- Forms the creamy base, giving the ice cream its smooth, rich texture.
- Caster sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the cherry flavour and balances the sweetness.
- Kirschwasser
- Adds aroma and a little alcohol, which keeps the ice cream from freezing rock hard.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cooked cherries through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked fruit through a fine sieve removes skins, stones fragments and fibres, giving a smooth texture. Leaving bits behind makes the finished ice cream gritty and uneven.
“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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