Name: Prune Ice Cream
Ingredients: 1 pint prunes; 2 slices lemon; 1 stick cinnamon; to taste sweetener; 1 quart thick cream

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Prune Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the prune base

Stew the prunes with the lemon slices and cinnamon stick until soft.
Sweeten to taste and mash the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and freeze

Mix the prune puree with the thick cream.
Freeze the mixture until solid.

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.

Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cinnamon + creamtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,510 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,640 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Prunes: Provide the main flavor and sweetness, and a smooth, thick puree once stewed and sieved.
Thick cream: Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen ice cream a creamy, smooth texture.
Cinnamon stick: Adds warm aroma to the stewed prunes.