Name: Chocolate Cream Ice
Ingredients: 1 pint of good custard; 3 oz of Cadbury’s cocoa; 1 pint of cream; a few drops of vanilla essence

Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Cream Ice

Ingredients

1 pint of good custard
3 oz of Cadbury’s cocoa
1 pint of cream
a few drops of vanilla essence

Directions

Make the mixture

Boil the cocoa in the cream.
Add the custard and a few drops of vanilla; mix well.

Freeze and serve

Freeze the mixture and serve in glasses.

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.

Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together357 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,301 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Cocoa + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together304 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and vanilla 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

Cocoa: Provides the chocolate flavour and dark colour, and boiling it in cream helps it dissolve evenly.
Cream: Adds richness and fat, giving the frozen dessert a smooth, creamy texture.
Custard: Adds body and sweetness, and its egg proteins and starch help give a smooth, scoopable texture.