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Dessert

Vanilla or Lemon Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla or lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk 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 ↓

Vanilla or Lemon Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks well and stir them into the milk.

  2. Add the sugar, cream, and vanilla or lemon peel.

  3. Heat the mixture over moderate heat, stirring constantly with a silver spoon until it is boiling hot.

Finish

  1. Remove the lemon peel or vanilla and let the mixture cool.

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 + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

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

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat and give the ice cream a rich, smooth body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the yolks and sugar are blended into.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream softer and creamier.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point so it stays scoopable.
Vanilla or lemon peel
Provides the main flavour; it is steeped in the base and then removed.

The step that matters

Heating the custard with constant stirring. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the mixture is heated too fast or left unstirred, the yolks can scramble and curdle. Gentle heat with constant stirring keeps the custard smooth.

“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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