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Dessert

Alexandra Ice

A chilled dessert made with macaroon crumbs, raisins, orange juice, heavy cream, and powdered sugar, served in pastry shells with syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Alexandra Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crush the macaroons to make 1 cup of fine crumbs and sift them.

  2. In a bowl, combine the raisins and orange juice, and let them sit overnight.

Make and freeze

  1. Whip the cream until stiff peaks form, then add the powdered sugar, macaroon crumbs, raisins, and orange juice.

  2. Pour the mixture into molds and pack in ice and salt, allowing 5 to 6 hours for freezing.

Serve

  1. To serve, turn each mold out into a rich pastry shell and drizzle with syrup.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Heavy cream
Whipped to stiff peaks, it forms the airy, creamy body of the frozen dessert.
Macaroon crumbs
Adds body and a toasty, almond-like sweetness that gives the mixture structure.
Sultana raisins
Soaked in orange juice, they add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Sweet orange juice
Softens the raisins and adds fruity aroma and gentle acidity.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cream and dissolves easily into it for a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Whip the cream to stiff peaks before folding in the other ingredients. Cream whipped to stiff peaks traps air, which keeps the frozen mixture light. If it is under-whipped or over-mixed after adding the other ingredients, it turns dense or grainy as it freezes.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, cream, sugar, syrup. 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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