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Dessert

Fudge Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from milk, sugar, chocolate, cream, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Fudge Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, bring 2 gallons of milk to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in 2 pounds of sugar.

Add the chocolate and cream

  1. Grate 4 ounces of chocolate and mix with ½ cup of warm water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the chocolate paste and ½ gallon of cream to the milk mixture.

  3. Strain the mixture and stir in 4 ounces of ground hickory or pecan nuts.

Freeze

  1. Freeze until solid.

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

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

  2. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the ice cream is built on, giving body and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer when frozen.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and fat, and the warm water paste helps it blend smoothly.
Cream
Adds fat, which gives the frozen ice cream a smooth, rich texture.
Hickory or pecan nuts
Add nutty flavor and a contrasting crunch to the ice cream.

The step that matters

Stir the chocolate paste in smoothly. Chocolate does not dissolve well in cold liquid. Making it into a smooth paste with warm water first helps it disperse evenly, so the finished ice cream doesn't have specks or gritty bits.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

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