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How to Make Frozen Custards

A custard mixture of cream, sugar, and eggs, boiled, cooled, beaten, then frozen like ice cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

How to Make Frozen Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Bring the cream to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Beat the eggs well and add them to the cooled mixture.

Freeze and flavor

  1. Freeze the mixture as you would ice cream.

  2. Flavor as 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.

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

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

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Cream
Provides fat that makes the frozen custard rich and smooth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer by lowering the freezing point.
Eggs
Add richness and body, and their proteins help thicken the custard base.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the eggs. Eggs added to a hot cream mixture can scramble and turn grainy. Cooling the base first lets the beaten eggs blend in smoothly and thicken evenly.

“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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