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Nougat Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with nuts and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Nougat Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar, egg yolks, and salt. Cook over medium heat until thickened to make a custard.

  2. Strain the custard and let it cool.

Prepare the cream and whites

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the heavy cream until stiff peaks form.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Finish and freeze

  1. Fold the whipped cream and beaten egg whites into the cooled custard.

  2. Add the chopped nuts, almond extract, and vanilla extract. Mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

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. Pistachio + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Pistachio + walnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Filbert + almondtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

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 and add richness as they set during cooking.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and a light, creamy texture when whipped into the base.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add airy volume and lightness to the frozen dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture by lowering the freezing point.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that gives the ice cream its body.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped cream and egg whites into the cooled custard. If the custard is still warm, it will melt the whipped cream and deflate the egg whites, losing the airy structure that keeps the ice cream light.

Swap the filbert

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, cream, pistachio, walnut, almond):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Brazil nutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, cream, pistachio, walnut, almond. 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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