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Dessert

Plain Ice Cream

A simple ice cream made by freezing heavy cream with ice and salt, optionally sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Plain Ice Cream

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 ↓

Plain Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. Place 1 quart of heavy cream in a freezer.

  2. Surround the pot with ice and coarse sea salt.

  3. Whisk the cream vigorously for 2 minutes.

  4. Freeze the mixture according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

  5. Add sugar to taste if desired.

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.

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.

  1. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Heavy cream
Provides fat and richness, which give the finished ice cream its smooth, creamy texture.
Ice
Chills the cream quickly so it cools and begins to thicken before freezing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the ice cream softer by lowering its freezing point.

The step that matters

Surround the pot with ice and coarse sea salt. Salt lowers the melting point of the ice, so the ice water becomes colder than plain ice would allow. This colder surrounding chills the cream faster, helping it freeze smoothly with small ice crystals.

“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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