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Dessert

Vamlla Ice Cream

A custard-based vanilla ice cream made with milk, cream, sugar, egg, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Vamlla Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan over a double boiler.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk, then stir the corn starch mixture into the heated milk.

  3. Cook the mixture until it boils for 2 minutes.

  4. Add the sugar.

  5. Beat the egg yolk with a spoonful of cold milk, then stir the beaten yolk into the mixture, cooking until it thickens without boiling.

  6. Remove the mixture from heat.

  7. Strain the mixture through a thin cloth.

  8. Cool the mixture in a pan of cold water for a few minutes.

Finish and freeze

  1. Beat the egg white with ½ teaspoon sugar until stiff.

  2. Fold the stiff egg white into the cooled custard.

  3. Stir in the cream and vanilla.

  4. Pour the mixture into an ice cream freezer.

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 + 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Egg yolk
Thickens the custard as it cooks and gives it a rich, smooth body.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard becomes smooth and holds its body when cooled.
Egg white
Whipped to stiffness and folded in to lighten the texture of the frozen cream.
Sweet cream
Adds fat that makes the ice cream rich and creamy and softens its freezing texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers its freezing point so the ice cream stays scoopable.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolk into the custard. Yolk must be stirred in gradually and cooked just until it thickens, not boiled. Boiling can curdle the egg proteins, leaving the custard grainy instead of smooth.

“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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