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Dessert

Chocolate Ice Cream

Chocolate ice cream made with milk, cream, sugar, cocoa, gelatin, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and gelatin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Chocolate Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate syrup

  1. Make a syrup with cocoa, 2½ pounds of sugar, and water.

  2. Set aside to cool.

Prepare the base

  1. Melt gelatin in 2 quarts of milk.

  2. Cool without letting it set.

  3. Dissolve the remaining sugar in the rest of the milk and cream.

Combine and freeze

  1. Add the cooled chocolate syrup and melted gelatin to the mixture. Mix well.

  2. Strain.

  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. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets into a light body that gives the frozen ice cream a smoother, firmer texture.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the ice cream rich and creamy and softens the ice crystals.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream scoopable.
Milk
Supplies water and milk solids that form the body of the base.

The step that matters

Cool without letting it set. Gelatin that sets before it is mixed in forms lumps and does not blend evenly. Keeping it liquid until it is added lets it disperse through the base and give an even texture after freezing.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cream, gelatin. 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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