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Dessert

Cocoanut Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cream, milk, eggs, sugar, cocoanut, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cocoanut Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat together the eggs and grated lemon rind.

  2. Combine with the milk in a double boiler and stir until the mixture begins to thicken.

  3. Add the cocoanut and let it cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cool, mix in the sugar, lemon juice, and cream.

  2. 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.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard base and add richness to the ice cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a custard with the eggs.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream smoother and creamier.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Prepared cocoanut
Adds coconut flavour and some texture to the ice cream.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard over a double boiler. Heating the eggs gently with the milk thickens the custard as the proteins set. Too much heat can scramble the eggs, leaving lumps and a grainy texture in the finished ice cream.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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