Skip to main content
Dessert

Ice Cream

A homemade ice cream made by boiling milk with sugar, adding egg yolks, thickening with flour, folding into beaten egg whites, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Ice Cream

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk with the sugar, stirring until dissolved.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with a fork.

  3. Add the beaten yolks to the warm milk.

  4. When the milk boils, stir in the moistened flour until thickened.

Finish the mixture

  1. Pour the mixture over the beaten egg whites, beating rapidly.

  2. Add the remaining quart of milk and cool the bowl in cold water.

  3. If using sherry wine for flavor, add it when the mixture begins to freeze.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives the ice cream its creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point, keeping the frozen result softer.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture as its starch swells when heated and boiled.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and add richness and smoothness.
Egg whites
Beaten into foam, they add lightness and an airy texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the moistened flour once the milk boils. Starch only thickens properly when it is fully hydrated and heated to boiling. Adding it too early or dry can leave lumps, and stopping short of a boil leaves the custard thin.

“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 ice cream recipes

Strawberry 208Vanilla 203Chocolate 177Cake 127Coffee 119Pineapple 104 See all 440 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes