Name: Ice Cream
Ingredients: 2 cups pure cream; 1 cup ripe natural fruits or good extracts; ¾ cup sugar; ice; coarse sea salt

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 ↓

Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

In a bowl, combine pure cream, ripe fruits or extracts, and sugar.

Set up the freezer

Pound ice and mix it with coarse sea salt in a ratio of 3:1 (ice to salt).
Place the freezing can in a tub and secure the lid.
Surround the can with the ice and salt mixture up to the cream level.

Churn and serve

Stir the cream rapidly and constantly to ensure smoothness.
The cream is ready when it stands heaped on a spoon.
To serve, wipe off salt and ice from the can, invert it on a plate, and use a warm, wet towel around the can to loosen the ice‑cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Pure cream: Provides fat, which makes the ice cream rich and smooth in texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Ripe fruits or extracts: Supply flavour and aroma to the cream base.