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Dessert

Custard Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with milk, cream, sugar, egg, flour, salt, and flavoring, then frozen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Custard Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until it reaches the scalding point.

  2. In a separate bowl, blend the sugar, flour, and salt with ½ cup cold milk.

  3. Add this mixture to the scalded milk and cook for 20 minutes at boiling temperature.

  4. Remove from heat and blend in the beaten egg yolk.

Finish and freeze

  1. Strain the mixture and blend it with the cream and flavoring.

  2. Cool the mixture and fold in the stiffly beaten egg white.

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

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

  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 + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

Milk
Forms the base of the custard, providing liquid and dairy richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Egg
Egg yolk thickens the custard when heated, and beaten white adds lightness.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream smoother and richer.
Flour
Thickens the custard base along with the heated egg and milk.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and sugar mixture at boiling temperature. Flour starch needs to be heated fully to swell and thicken the custard. Undercooked starch leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin base, and the egg yolk must be added off the heat so it does not scramble.

“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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