Skip to main content
Dessert

Ices and Ice Cream

A homemade ice cream made from milk, eggs, sugar, cream, vanilla, and ice with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ices and Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil 3 pints of milk in a double boiler.

  2. Beat yolks and whites of eggs separately.

  3. Mix yolks with remaining pint of milk and stir into boiling milk.

  4. Boil for 2 minutes, then remove from heat.

  5. Add sugar and let it dissolve.

  6. Strain through a cloth and cool.

  7. Add cream and vanilla, then refrigerate until needed.

Freeze

  1. Prepare ice by pounding it until small.

  2. Pack ice and salt around the freezer, using ¾ ice and ¼ salt.

  3. Pour custard into the freezer, filling ⅔ full, and replace the cover.

  4. Begin turning the freezer to churn the ice cream.

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 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. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and supplies milk solids for body and a rich, dairy flavour.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard as they heat and help bind the base smoothly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and smoother.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen texture creamy and less icy.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and rounds out the flavour of the dairy base.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 minutes, then remove from heat. Egg yolks thicken the custard as they heat, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Stopping at the set time keeps the custard smooth before straining.

“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.

More ice cream recipes

Strawberry 208Vanilla 203Chocolate 177Cake 127Coffee 119Pineapple 104 See all 440 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes