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New York Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with milk, cream, eggs, sugar, gelatin, vanilla, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

New York Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar, egg yolks, and salt to make a custard.

  2. Heat the mixture until it comes to a boil, then remove from heat.

  3. Dissolve gelatin in a little warm water and add it to the custard.

Finish and freeze

  1. Cool the mixture, then strain and add vanilla and lemon extracts.

  2. Whip the cream and fold it into the custard mixture.

  3. Freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their proteins and fat.
Gelatin
Adds body and helps the frozen ice cream hold its shape and resist melting.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the ice cream smooth and rich in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream scoopable.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the custard is built on.

The step that matters

Heat the custard until it comes to a boil. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but they can scramble if overheated. Heating just to a boil and then removing from heat thickens the custard while limiting curdling, which keeps the base smooth before freezing.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, sugar, egg, gelatin, 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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