Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Ice Cream

A simple ice cream made from milk, cream, sugar, and a junket tablet, optionally flavored with fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Plain Ice Cream

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 ↓

Plain Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Dissolve the crushed junket tablet in lukewarm milk.

  2. Add sugar and cream, stirring until the sugar has melted.

Prepare the fruit

  1. If using fruit, cover it with sugar and let it stand for one hour.

  2. Mash the fruit well and strain it through a coarse cheesecloth.

Freeze

  1. Add the fruit puree to the cream and milk mixture before freezing.

  2. Freeze the mixture until it reaches a creamy consistency.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Sugar + junkettop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + junkettop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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 junket tablet sets and the cream enriches.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture in the frozen result.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps keep the ice cream softer when frozen.
Junket tablet
Its rennet enzyme curdles the milk, giving the base body before freezing.

Swap the peach

The recipe marks peach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, sugar, junket):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Bananafits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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

You might also like

Peach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipesJunketJunket22 recipes