Name: Wine Ice Cream
Ingredients: 2 cups cream; 5 egg yolks; 2/3 cup white wine; sugar to taste; chopped preserved mixed fruits

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 ↓

Wine Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

In a saucepan, combine cream and egg yolks to prepare a custard.
Pour the custard into a basin and let it cool.

Freeze and serve

Add white wine and sugar to sweeten, then freeze in a freezer.
Stir in chopped preserved mixed fruits.
Turn the cream into a mold packed in ice and let it set.
Turn it out onto a cold dish to serve.

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).
Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,760 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42,166 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks: Thicken the custard and add richness to the frozen cream.
Cream: Provides fat and body, giving the ice cream a smooth, rich texture.
White wine: Adds flavour and acidity, and lowers the freezing point so the texture stays softer.
Sugar: Sweetens the mixture and softens the frozen texture.

“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.