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Dessert

Tea Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made by scalding cream with tea, mixing eggs and sugar, then freezing and layering with strawberry and vanilla creams and candied fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tea Ice Cream

Why it works: Strawberry and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,385 recipes. Both carry p-vinylguaiacol, which smells spicy, fruity. The science ↓

Tea Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea custard

  1. Pour 1 pint of cream over ½ cup of Old Hyson tea and cover the mixture.

  2. Let it scald over boiling water for a few minutes, then remove the mixture from heat and let it stand for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture into 1 pint of cold cream.

  4. Return the cold cream to the boiling water.

  5. Gradually mix in 4 beaten eggs, then gradually mix in ¾ pound of sugar.

  6. Freeze the mixture.

Layer and freeze

  1. Add a layer of strawberry cream half an inch deep to the mold.

  2. Fill the mold with vanilla cream.

  3. Add bits of candied fruit throughout.

  4. Pack the mold in salt and ice until thoroughly frozen.

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. Strawberry + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,385 recipes

    Shared aroma: p-vinylguaiacol (spicy, fruity).

  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. Tea + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

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

  5. Tea + strawberrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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
Provides richness and fat, giving the frozen dessert a smooth, creamy texture.
Old hyson tea
Infuses the cream with its flavor during scalding and steeping.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook gently, adding richness and structure to the frozen base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the beaten eggs. Adding hot cream to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Adding eggs gradually while the cream is warm lets them thicken smoothly into a custard.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Peachfits about as well
  2. Strawberrythe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, tea, egg, sugar, 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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