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Orange Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with orange juice and colored with saffron-yellow and carmine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Orange Ice Cream

Why it works: Orange and saffron work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 185 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Orange Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Prepare the custard according to the directions for cream ices.

Make the orange flavouring

  1. Remove the outer yellow part of 2 oranges by rubbing them with the lumps of sugar.

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

  3. Mix the dissolved sugar with the strained juice of the oranges.

Combine and freeze

  1. When cool, stir the mixture into the custard.

  2. Add carmine and saffron-yellow coloring until the desired color is achieved.

  3. Freeze in the usual way.

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.

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.

  1. Orange + saffrontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 frozen texture is built on.
Oranges
Supply the juice and zest that give the ice cream its citrus flavour and aroma.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, once dissolved, carries the orange flavour through the base.

The step that matters

Stir the orange mixture into the custard only when cool. Adding warm juice and sugar syrup to the custard can thin it or cause the dairy to curdle, and the base may not freeze smoothly. Letting it cool first keeps the custard stable and the texture even.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, 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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