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Dessert

Cocoa Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cocoa, sugar, eggs, cream, and milk, optionally flavored with raspberry pulp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cocoa Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix cocoa, sugar, corn starch, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add scalded milk and the stick of cinnamon to the mixture and cook in a double boiler for 20 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg yolks slightly in a separate bowl.

  4. Stir in cream, melted butter, and vanilla into the egg yolks.

  5. Combine the egg yolk mixture with the cocoa mixture and strain the combined mixture.

Freeze

  1. Chill the mixture and then freeze it.

  2. If desired, mix in raspberry pulp before freezing.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 and add richness as they set during gentle cooking.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and softer freezing.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the ice cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the ice cream from freezing rock-hard.
Corn starch
Thickens the base and gives a smoother, less icy texture.

The step that matters

Cook the milk and cocoa mixture in the double boiler. Gentle heat over simmering water keeps the mixture from scorching while the starch thickens it. Overheating can curdle the egg yolks added later, so the base must stay at a controlled temperature.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, egg, corn, cream, butter, milk. 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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