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Dessert

Ige Cream with Maple Sauce

A vanilla ice cream topped with a homemade maple sauce and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ige Cream with Maple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. To make the sauce, heat 1 cup of maple sugar until melted and browned, but not scorched.

  2. Add 1 heaping tablespoon of butter and 1 scant tablespoon of cornstarch to the melted sugar.

  3. Cook for a few moments, then add 1 coffee cup of boiling water.

  4. Stir until smooth; it will be lumpy at first.

  5. Let it boil slowly for at least 1 hour.

  6. Add coarse sea salt to taste and let cool.

Serve

  1. Serve rich vanilla ice cream in dishes.

  2. Pour 1 tablespoon of maple caramel sauce over the ice cream.

  3. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of chopped walnuts or pecans.

  4. Serve hot if desired.

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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + coffeetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Maple sugar
Melts and browns to form the sweet, caramel-flavoured base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body and a glossy texture.
Rich vanilla ice cream
Provides the cold, creamy base that the warm sauce contrasts with.

The step that matters

Stir the cornstarch mixture until smooth before boiling. Cornstarch clumps when added to hot liquid unless it is well dispersed. Stirring until smooth prevents lumps, and the starch must boil to fully thicken the sauce.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, cream, sauce, sugar, butter, coffee. 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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