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Dessert

White Cherry Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with cream, white cherries, sugar, cherry juice, caramel, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 890 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

White Cherry Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Add the sugar to half of the cream, heat to steaming point, and cool.

  2. Seed the cherries and keep them in a cool place until needed.

Freeze and serve

  1. When ready to freeze, mix together all ingredients except the cherries.

  2. Freeze the mixture, and add the cherries if serving within 30 minutes.

  3. If letting it ripen for 2 hours, stir in the cherries shortly before serving.

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. Cherry + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the ice cream softer when frozen.
Canned white cherries
Supply fruit flavour and pieces that give contrast to the creamy base.
Cherry juice
Adds fruity flavour and moisture to the base.
Caramel
Adds a deeper, toffee-like flavour and colour.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma that rounds out the sweetness and fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the cherries at the right time. Cherries hold a lot of water, so if they are frozen into the mixture they set hard and icy. Adding them late, as the record directs, keeps them tender and juicy in the finished ice cream.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, 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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