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Dessert

Ice Cream

A cold dessert made from eggs, milk, flour, almonds, sugar, vanilla, and frozen with ice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Ice Cream

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the eggs well with the sugar and set aside.

  2. Boil the milk until it thickens to a cream.

  3. Mix the flour with a little cold water and add it to the milk, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the ground almonds, sugar, and the mixed eggs; stir for a little longer.

  5. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.

  6. To flavor, add a little vanilla essence or any other essence.

Freeze

  1. To freeze, use 10 lbs. of ice and 2 lbs. of coarse sea salt.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Set the custard and add richness and body as they cook with the milk.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that thickens when boiled.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it becomes smooth and creamy.
Ground almonds
Add body, nutty flavor and a fine texture to the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and adds to its smooth texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the milk. Flour clumps if added to hot milk without being mixed with cold water first and stirred constantly. Constant stirring keeps the thickening even and smooth.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

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