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Neapolitan Ice Cream

A custard ice cream made with egg yolks, sugar, cream, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Neapolitan Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the cream over hot water, but do not boil it.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until thick and creamy.

  3. Add the sugar to the yolks and beat again.

  4. Pour the hot cream into the egg mixture and mix well.

  5. Transfer to a double boiler and cook like boiled custard.

  6. Strain the mixture immediately and let it cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cold, add the vanilla and 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and add richness and a smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Cream
Provides fat that makes the ice cream rich and creamy.

The step that matters

Cook the custard in the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but can scramble if overheated. Gentle, indirect heat over water keeps the custard smooth, so it should be cooked slowly and stirred until it coats a spoon.

“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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