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Dessert

Ice Cream Without a Freezer

A no-freezer ice cream made by boiling milk, sugar, eggs, and cream, then cooling and freezing in ice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Ice Cream Without a Freezer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of 8 eggs until light.

  2. Add 4 cups of sugar and stir well.

  3. Gradually add 1 quart of heated milk while beating continuously.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

  5. Boil the mixture in a double boiler for about 15 minutes, stirring steadily until thickened.

  6. Pour into a bowl and let cool completely.

Add cream and freeze

  1. Once cool, fold in 3 pints of rich sweet cream and 5 teaspoons of vanilla or your preferred flavoring.

  2. Transfer to a pail with a close-fitting cover and pack with pounded ice and rock salt.

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving it body and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen result softer by lowering its freezing point.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken and the cream enriches.
Egg whites
Folded in to add lightness and a airy texture to the custard.
Rich sweet cream
Adds fat for a smooth, creamy mouthfeel in the finished ice cream.
Rock salt
Lowers the temperature of the packing ice so the mixture freezes.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated. Steady stirring over gentle heat in a double boiler lets them thicken smoothly without lumps.

“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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