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Custard Ices

A custard ice made with eggs, cream, lemon zest, lemon slice, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Custard Ices

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a copper pan.

  2. Add the cream and mix gently.

  3. Add the lemon zest and slice to the cream mixture.

  4. Place the pan over low heat and stir constantly with a wooden whisk.

  5. Do not let the mixture boil; remove from heat when it thickens and resists stirring.

  6. Sweeten with powdered sugar to taste and strain through a sieve.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar 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
Egg yolks thicken the cream into a rich custard as they gently set with heat.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, creamy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves easily into the warm base.
Lemon zest
Adds aromatic lemon oils that flavour the cream without adding much liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low and do not let it boil. Egg yolks set at low temperatures; boiling can overcook them, causing curdling and a grainy texture. Removing the pan once the custard thickens and resists stirring prevents this.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, 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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