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Custard Ice Cream

A frozen custard made from seasoned milk, arrow-root, egg, and fruit or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Custard Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, boil the seasoned milk and stir in the arrow-root until dissolved.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  3. Add the well-beaten egg and mix well. Stir briskly to prevent curdling.

Flavor and freeze

  1. Flavor with lemon juice or the juice of bruised raspberries or strawberries.

  2. Freeze the mixture until it reaches a creamy consistency.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 main body of the ice cream and carries the flavor.
Arrow-root
Thickens the milk so the mixture sets smoother and holds together when frozen.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the custard as it is mixed in.

The step that matters

Stir briskly after adding the egg. Egg proteins can scramble and curdle when they meet warm liquid. Stirring briskly spreads the egg through the mixture quickly, so it thickens evenly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg. 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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