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Dessert

Ice Cream

A homemade ice cream made with heavy cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Ice Cream

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 ↓

Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Whip 1 pint of heavy cream.

  2. Drain the whipped cream.

  3. Add ⅓ cup sugar, 1 cup heavy cream, and 1 cup milk to the drained cream.

  4. Scald the mixture thoroughly.

  5. Cool the mixture.

  6. Add 1 tablespoon of vanilla or preferred flavoring.

Freeze and serve

  1. Freeze until it resembles soft mush.

  2. Add the whipped cream.

  3. Churn in the freezer as fast as possible for 5 minutes.

  4. Pack the ice cream.

  5. Let it stand for 30 minutes before serving.

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 + 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. Cream + sugartop 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. Cream + milktop 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

Heavy cream
Supplies fat for a rich, creamy texture, and whipping traps air for lightness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen ice cream softer by lowering its freezing point.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that give the base body and a milder dairy flavor.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and flavor to the finished ice cream.

The step that matters

Freeze until it resembles soft mush. Freezing the base to a soft, partly frozen state before churning lets churning break ice into small crystals, which keeps the texture smooth. Freezing it fully solid would make it hard to churn and grainy.

“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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