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Dessert

Delicious Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with milk, cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and a touch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Delicious Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with ½ cup sugar and stir into the hot milk.

  3. Stir constantly until thickened, then cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Beat the eggs with a few grains of salt and ½ cup sugar.

  5. Add a little of the hot mixture to the eggs and blend well.

  6. Stir the egg mixture into the rest of the hot mixture.

  7. Cook until the egg mixture is set, then strain.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cold, add the rich cream and vanilla.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

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 + 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. Sugar + creamtop 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. Milk + creamtop 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set and add richness to the base.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk so the custard holds body before freezing.
Rich cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream smooth and creamy.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and softens the texture of the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the egg mixture until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Adding a little hot milk first gently warms the eggs so they blend smoothly into the base.

“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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