Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Vanilla Ice Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the thin cream, sugar, salt, and vanilla in a bowl.
Freeze the mixture using 3 parts finely crushed ice to 1 part rock salt.
Serve once fully frozen.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,301 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
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
- Thin cream
- Provides the fat and body that make the frozen custard rich and smooth.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point so it stays soft and scoopable.
- Vanilla
- Adds the main flavour of the ice cream.
- Rock salt
- Lowers the temperature of the ice bath so the mixture freezes.
The step that matters
Freeze using the ice and rock salt mix. Rock salt mixed with crushed ice lowers the bath's temperature below freezing point of plain ice, so the cream can freeze. Too little salt or ice leaves the mixture slushy and slow to set.
“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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