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Dessert

Cherries and Ice Cream

A dessert of cherries simmered into a syrup served over vanilla ice cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherries and Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cherry syrup

  1. Place pitted cherries in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Add sugar and cook slowly until cherries are tender.

  3. Remove cherries and boil the juice down to a thin syrup; let it cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. In each sherbet glass, place 1 tablespoon of cherries at the bottom.

  2. Top with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream.

  3. Drizzle a little syrup over the ice cream and garnish with a cherry on top.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vanilla + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cherries
Provide the fruit flavor and texture, and release juice that cooks down into the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherries and syrup and helps thicken the reduced juice.
Vanilla ice cream
Forms the creamy, cold base that the warm-tasting syrup and cherries sit on.

The step that matters

Boil the juice down to a thin syrup. Reducing the juice concentrates its sugar and flavor. If it is boiled too little it stays watery and thins the ice cream; if boiled too far it becomes sticky and tastes harsh. Letting it cool before use keeps the ice cream from melting.

“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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