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Cocoa Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with cocoa.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Cocoa Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald 1 cup of milk.

  2. Whisk together the sugar and eggs.

  3. Combine the whisked sugar and eggs with the scalded milk to make a custard.

Make the cocoa base

  1. Moisten the cocoa with cold water.

  2. Mix in 4 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Cook the cocoa mixture until it is thick and glossy.

Combine and freeze

  1. Blend the cocoa mixture into the custard.

  2. Combine the entire mixture with the remaining cold milk.

  3. Add more sugar if desired.

  4. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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 + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cocoatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 and add richness and structure to the ice cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes the custard and the frozen body of the ice cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen ice cream softer rather than rock hard.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the ice cream.

The step that matters

Cook the cocoa mixture until thick and glossy. Cocoa does not dissolve in cold liquid and clumps easily. Cooking it fully hydrates the cocoa particles, smooths out lumps, and reduces the raw, bitter taste of unheated cocoa, so the final base is smooth and well flavored.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Cocoathe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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