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Nougat Cream Ice

A frozen cream ice flavoured with nougat, orange-flower water and essence of peach kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 385 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Nougat Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Bruise the nougat in a mortar with the orange-flower water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the nougat mixture with egg yolks, sugar, and cream.

  3. Stir over low heat until the mixture begins to thicken.

Chill and freeze

  1. Strain the mixture into a basin and let it cool.

  2. Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

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. Orange + peachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 as they set gently over low heat.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Single cream
Provides fat and moisture for a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until the mixture begins to thicken. Egg yolks thicken at gentle temperatures, and high heat can scramble them into lumps. Keeping the heat low and stirring steadily gives a smooth custard base.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, peach. 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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