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Chocolate Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with chocolate and optional lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Combine milk and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix chocolate with sugar and beaten egg yolks, then add the hot milk mixture.

  3. Return to the stove and bring to a boil again.

Finish the ice cream

  1. Once cooled, stir in the sweet cream and beaten egg whites.

  2. Add a little lemon or vanilla flavoring to taste.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the custard and add richness and structure to the frozen cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the ice cream smooth and scoopable.
Sweet cream
Adds fat for a rich, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate and eggs are combined into.
Chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavor and some fat for body.

The step that matters

Return to the stove and bring to a boil again. Egg yolks thicken the custard as they heat, but if it boils too hard or too long they can scramble, leaving lumps. Heat gently and stop once the custard coats a spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, sugar, egg, chocolate. 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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