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Ices and Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made by freezing a mixture of milk, cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and ice with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Ices and Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil 3 pints of milk.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Beat the egg whites.

  4. Mix the yolks with the remaining pint of milk. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  5. Boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat.

  6. Add sugar and let it dissolve.

  7. Strain through a crash towel.

  8. Cool the mixture.

  9. Add cream and vanilla.

  10. Set the custard and unwhipped egg whites in a cool place.

Prepare the freezer

  1. Prepare ice by pounding it in a coarse coffee sack until small.

  2. Pack the freezer with layers of ice and salt, starting and ending with ice.

  3. Pour the custard into the freezer.

  4. Add the whipped egg whites.

Freeze

  1. Turn the freezer for 10 minutes.

  2. Pack down the ice and drain water.

  3. Repeat until the cream is well frozen and the beater cannot turn.

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. Sugar + creamtop 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. Milk + creamtop 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and enrich it, while whipped whites lighten the frozen texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that freezes into the ice cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream soft and scoopable.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream smooth and rich rather than icy.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Stir the yolks into the milk before boiling. Adding hot milk to yolks slowly, then returning it to heat, keeps the eggs from scrambling. Boiling the custard afterward thickens it evenly.

“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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