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Dessert

Bourbon Cream Ice

A frozen dessert made from milk, sugar, egg yolks, almond milk, and candied fruits, flavored with vanilla and maraschino.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 911 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Bourbon Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Soak the fruits in the maraschino.

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard with the milk, sugar, and egg yolks.

  2. Mix the custard with the almond milk and vanilla essence.

Freeze and set

  1. Freeze the mixture until stiff.

  2. Add the soaked fruits and mix well.

  3. Work the ice again and set it in a mold until firm.

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. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and a smooth, creamy texture to the ice.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice softer.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the custard and frozen texture are built on.
Sweet almonds
Provide the almond milk that adds nutty flavor and body to the base.
Dried cherries
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the ice.
Currants
Add tart, chewy bits of dried fruit that contrast with the creamy base.

The step that matters

Working the ice after freezing. Mixing the partly frozen mixture with the soaked fruit must be done evenly. Ice crystals that grow large make the texture coarse and gritty, and uneven mixing leaves pockets of fruit and icy patches.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, almond, orange, pineapple, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, almond, orange, pineapple, vanilla. 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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