Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Ice Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Make the base
Wet the arrowroot with a little cold milk.
Add the arrowroot to the boiling milk and sweeten with white sugar.
Stir in the grated lemon peel and boil the mixture.
Strain the mixture into the thick cream.
Freeze
When the mixture is partly frozen, add the lemon juice.
If you don't have a freezing apparatus, place the cream in a tightly covered tin pail.
Mix equal parts of snow and fine salt or crushed ice and salt in a tub.
Surround the pail with this mixture.
Turn the pail half round and back again with one hand for about 30 to 45 minutes.
Mix the frozen part with the rest several times.
Ensure the mixture is perfectly cool before placing it in the freezer.
Cover the freezer tightly with snow and salt until ready to serve.
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.
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Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together553 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together817 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Arrowroot
- Thickens the milk mixture so the finished ice cream has a smooth, body-rich texture.
- Thick cream
- Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen ice cream a creamy, smooth mouthfeel.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the thickener sets in and the cream is blended into.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer when frozen.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity and bright flavour, cutting the sweetness of the cream.
The step that matters
Adding the lemon juice when partly frozen. Acid added to cold cream can curdle or thin the base, and adding it before the mixture is partly frozen risks separation. Waiting until it is partly frozen lets the lemon blend in smoothly without destabilising the texture.
Swap the arrowroot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, cream, sugar):
- Arrowrootthe original
- Potatofits about as well
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Asparagusfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cream, sugar. 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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