Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cream, chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Chocolate Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald 1 pint of cream in a saucepan.

  2. Add ½ pound of sweet chocolate, 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract, ⅛ teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1 cup of sugar, then stir until the mixture is perfectly smooth.

Finish and freeze

  1. Cool the mixture, then add 1 pint of cream.

  2. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Sweet chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and adds body to the base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.

The step that matters

Stir the chocolate mixture until perfectly smooth. Any unmelted chocolate or undissolved sugar will leave grainy specks in the finished ice cream. Cooling the base before adding the second pint of cream keeps the fat from splitting and the texture even.

“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.

More chocolate ice cream recipes

You might also like