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Dessert

Philadelphia Ice Cream

A cold dessert made from milk, cream, sugar, flour, vanilla, and salt, boiled and frozen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Philadelphia Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold milk.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Cook for 20 minutes, then let it cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cool, add the cream, sugar, vanilla, and salt, and mix well.

  2. Freeze until firm.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base, and its milk solids and sugars give the custard body and mild sweetness.
Flour
Starch thickens the base as it heats, giving the mixture body.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream rich and smooth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer by limiting ice crystal formation.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and a familiar flavor that rounds out the dairy.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with cold milk before adding it to the boiling milk. Flour clumps when dropped into hot liquid, because its outer starch swells and seals the inside before it can disperse. Suspending the flour in cold milk first lets the starch spread evenly, so the base thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy.

“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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