Name: Egyptian Ice Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint cream; 2 tablespoons sugar; ⅓ cup maraschino; cherry water ice

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Egyptian Ice Pudding

Ingredients

1 pint cream
2 tablespoons sugar
⅓ cup maraschino
cherry water ice

Directions

Make the cream base

Whip the cream lightly and mix in the sugar and maraschino.
Freeze the mixture until solid.

Assemble and set

Line a pyramid ice pudding mold with the frozen cream ice.
Fill the mold with cherry water ice.
Cover with the remaining plain cream, close the mold, and set as usual.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,598 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cream + cherrytop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together827 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream: Forms the rich, creamy body of the pudding once whipped and frozen.
Sugar: Sweetens the cream and softens the freezing texture slightly.
Maraschino: Adds cherry aroma and flavour to the cream layer.
Cherry water ice: Provides the cherry-flavoured icy filling inside the mold.