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Dessert

Ice Cream

A homemade ice cream made with sugar, eggs, vanilla, cream, ice, and salt.

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

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 ↓

Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a clean kettle, combine 2 lbs sugar, 4 eggs, and vanilla extract. Stir well with an egg beater.

  2. Add 4 quarts of cream and place the kettle on the fire. Stir constantly until it is about to boil.

  3. Remove from heat and strain through a fine sieve into an earthen crock. Let it cool.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into a freezing can already filled with broken ice and salt.

  2. Cover and turn the crank slowly and steadily until it cannot be turned any longer.

  3. Open the can and remove the dasher. Scrape the hardened cream from the sides with a long-handled spatula.

  4. Beat and work the cream until smooth. Close the can, drain off the water, and repack with fresh ice and salt.

  5. Let it rest for an hour or two to harden.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Eggs
Egg proteins thicken the custard as it cooks and add richness to the texture.
Cream
Fat gives the ice cream its smooth, rich body and slows the formation of large ice crystals.
Sugar
Sweetness, and it lowers the freezing point so the mixture stays softer and scoopable.
Coarse sea salt
Salt in the ice bath lowers its temperature so the mixture can freeze.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until it is about to boil. Eggs thicken as they heat, and if the custard gets too hot or sits unstirred it can curdle or scramble. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the base becomes smooth and thick without overcooking.

“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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