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A chilled dessert made with cedrat peel, raisins, currants, vanilla, and white cream or meringue paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Ices

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Boil the cedrat peel, raisins, currants, and vanilla in syrup for a short time.

Freeze the mixture

  1. Put the mixture into the ice cream machine and churn until nearly frozen.

  2. Add the white cream or meringue paste and finish freezing.

Set and store

  1. Once hard, place it in a mold and keep it in ice until needed.

  2. Save the water at the bottom of the machine until finished.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Currant + vanillatop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Raisin + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,642 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Cedrat peel
Gives the ice cream its citrus aroma and slightly bitter, fragrant flavour.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture to the frozen mixture.
Currants
Add sweetness and small pockets of chewy, concentrated fruit flavour.
White cream or meringue paste
Adds richness and air, making the frozen ice cream smoother and creamier.

The step that matters

Add the cream after churning until nearly frozen. If the mixture is fully frozen before the cream goes in, the cream cannot blend evenly and the texture becomes icy and uneven. Stopping at nearly frozen keeps the base soft enough to fold the cream through, and the cream's fat and air limit the size of ice crystals as it finishes freezing.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, vanilla, cream):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, vanilla, cream. 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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