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Dessert

New York Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with powdered sugar, egg yolks, condensed milk, cream, and vanilla.

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

New York Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Whip the egg yolks thoroughly.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and cream, mixing well.

  3. Scald the mixture in a double boiler, stirring constantly without allowing it to boil.

  4. Add the condensed milk, or 1-3 oz of best gelatin dissolved in a pint of hot milk if preferred, and stir well.

Strain, cool and freeze

  1. Strain.

  2. Cool.

  3. Freeze.

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. 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. Sugar + condensed milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Condensed milk + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together416 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the custard base thicken and emulsify when scalded.
Cream
Supplies fat for a rich, smooth texture in the frozen ice cream.
Condensed milk
Adds sweetness and milk solids that make the base creamy and soft when frozen.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the base and dissolves easily, and its sugar lowers the freezing point for a softer texture.

The step that matters

Scalding without boiling. Heating the egg yolk mixture gently while stirring constantly thickens it smoothly; if it boils, the yolks can scramble and leave a grainy custard.

“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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