Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Ice Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard base
Wet the arrowroot with a little cold milk.
Add the arrowroot to the boiling milk.
Sweeten the mixture very sweet with white sugar.
Add the grated lemon peel.
Boil the whole mixture.
Strain the mixture into the quart of cream.
Freeze without a machine
If you don't have a freezing apparatus, put the cream in a tightly covered tin pail.
Mix equal quantities of snow and fine salt or pounded ice and salt in a tub.
Place the pail in the mixture.
Turn the pail half round and back again with one hand for half an hour.
Stop four or five times to mix the frozen part with the rest thoroughly.
When partly frozen, add the juice of the two lemons.
Add the lemon juice.
Cover the freezer tightly with snow and salt until needed.
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.
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Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together553 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together817 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Arrowroot
- Thickens the milk mixture so the finished ice cream is smooth and not icy.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the sugar sweetens.
- Thick cream
- Adds fat, which makes the ice cream rich and creamy in texture.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the base and also lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that gives a bright, tart flavour.
The step that matters
Adding the lemon juice when partly frozen. Acid added to a liquid base can curdle or thin cream and interrupts freezing. Adding the juice only once the mixture is partly frozen, then stirring well, keeps the texture smooth and distributes the tartness evenly.
Swap the arrowroot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, cream, sugar):
- Arrowrootthe original
- Potatofits about as well
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Asparagusfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cream, sugar. 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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