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Dessert

Plain Ice Cream

A simple ice cream made with cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla bean.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Plain Ice Cream

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 ↓

Plain Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cut the vanilla bean and add it to the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the milk and vanilla bean slowly until it boils.

  3. Strain the mixture through a wire sieve to remove the bean, allowing the seeds to fall into the cream.

  4. Combine the strained milk with the thick cream and sugar.

  5. Cool the mixture.

Churn and freeze

  1. Whip the mixture until frothy.

  2. Freeze the mixture, stirring frequently as it hardens.

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

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

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

Thick cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.
Whole milk
Provides liquid and milk solids that form the body of the base.
Vanilla bean
Adds aroma and flavour from its seeds and pod infused into the milk.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture, stirring frequently as it hardens. Stirring breaks up ice crystals as the mixture freezes, keeping the texture smooth rather than icy and grainy.

“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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