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Dessert

Macaroon Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with whipped cream, sugar, orange juice, and macaroons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Macaroon Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Whip the cream and ¼ pound of sugar together until well combined.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

Add the macaroons and freeze

  1. Soak the juice of 3 large oranges and ¼ pound of sugar with the macaroons.

  2. Add the macaroon mixture to the cream when it is half frozen.

  3. Freeze completely.

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

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

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  3. Cream + orangetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Sugar and orange 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

Rich cream
Provides fat and body, giving the ice cream a smooth, rich texture once frozen.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and less icy.
Orange juice
Adds bright acidity and citrus flavor that balances the sweetness of the cream.
Waxy macaroons
Soak up the orange syrup and add chewy pieces and flavor throughout the ice cream.

The step that matters

Add the macaroon mixture when the cream is half frozen. At this stage the cream is thick enough to hold the soaked macaroon pieces evenly. Adding them to liquid cream lets them sink, while adding them to a fully frozen base makes it hard to fold them in.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar. 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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