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Tea Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made by scalding cream with tea, adding eggs and sugar, then freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Tea Ice Cream

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 ↓

Tea Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea cream

  1. Pour 1 pint of cream over ½ cup of Old Hyson tea, cover, and let it scald over boiling water for a few minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let it stand for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture into 1 pint of cold cream.

  4. Place the strained mixture over boiling water.

Finish and freeze

  1. When scalding, gradually mix in 4 beaten eggs and ¾ pound of sugar.

  2. Once cold, freeze the mixture.

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.

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

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Cream + teatop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Tea + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,204 recipes

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

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 fat and richness, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Eggs
Thicken the custard base and add richness as they set gently over heat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Old hyson tea
Infused into the cream to give the ice cream its tea flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs and sugar while scalding. Eggs thicken when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if the mixture gets too hot or the eggs are added too quickly. Adding them gradually while stirring keeps the custard smooth.

“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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