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Plain Ice Cream

A simple ice cream made with cream, milk, sugar, egg whites, lemon flavoring, and vanilla extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Plain Ice Cream

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 ↓

Plain Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the sugar with the milk until dissolved.

  2. Cool the mixture, then add the cream, lemon flavoring, and vanilla extract.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into an ice cream freezer.

  2. When it begins to freeze around the sides, blend in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

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. 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

Cream
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and mild dairy flavor for the ice cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer by lowering the freezing point.
Egg whites
Stiffly beaten, they trap air and make the ice cream lighter.

The step that matters

Blend in the egg whites at the right moment. Add the stiffly beaten whites once the mixture just begins to freeze at the edges. The partly frozen base is cold enough to hold the foam, so the whites stay airy instead of collapsing or melting into the cream.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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