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Dessert

Made of Milk

A chilled milk dessert made with eggs, sugar, flavoring, arrowroot, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Made of Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil half of the milk.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  3. Slowly pour the boiling milk into the eggs while stirring continuously.

  4. Strain the mixture and add the cold milk, sugar, and flavoring.

Make the arrowroot version

  1. For another method, mix a little milk with the arrowroot and boil two quarts of milk.

  2. Stir the arrowroot mixture into the boiling milk.

  3. Add two quarts of cold milk, sugar, and flavoring.

Finish

  1. Whip the cream to a strong froth and stir it into the mixture when half frozen.

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. Raspberry + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

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

  2. Plum + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Raspberry + strawberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, sweet).

  4. Strawberry + peachtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together228 recipes

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

  5. Strawberry + plumtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set with heat, adding richness and a smooth body.
Arrowroot
A starch that thickens the milk when boiled, giving a smooth texture without eggs.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and a lighter, creamier mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs or arrowroot thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk into the eggs. Adding hot milk to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while stirring gradually warms the eggs so they thicken into a smooth custard.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, raspberry, strawberry, plum, peach):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, raspberry, strawberry, plum, peach. 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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