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Dessert

Lemon Cream Ice

A chilled dessert made from custard, lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, and optional saffron coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lemon Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Prepare the custard according to the directions given.

Make the lemon flavouring

  1. Rub the lumps of sugar on the rinds of the lemons until all the outer yellow part is removed.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in 1 tablespoon of warm water.

  3. Add the juice of 1 lemon.

Finish and freeze

  1. When cool, stir into the custard.

  2. If necessary, add a few drops of liquid saffron coloring.

  3. Freeze.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Custard
Forms the creamy base that the lemon flavour and freezing turn into ice cream.
Loaf sugar
Picks up lemon oil from the rinds and dissolves to add sweetness to the mixture.
Lemons
Provide the lemon aroma from the rinds and the acidity from the juice.

The step that matters

Rub the sugar on the lemon rinds. Only the outer yellow zest should be removed, since the bitter white pith underneath carries unpleasant flavour. Lemon oil transfers into the sugar lumps, giving a clean, bright aroma.

“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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