Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Ice Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard base
Wet the arrowroot with a little cold milk.
Add the arrowroot to the boiling milk.
Sweeten the mixture with white sugar and add the grated lemon peel.
Boil the whole mixture and strain it into the thick cream.
Freeze
When partly frozen, add the juice of the two lemons.
If you don't have a freezer, place the cream in a tightly covered tin pail.
Mix equal parts of snow and salt (or pounded ice and salt) in a tub and place the pail in it.
Turn the pail half round and back again with one hand for about 30 to 45 minutes, mixing the frozen part with the rest several times.
Cover the freezer tightly with snow and salt until ready to serve.
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.
-
Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together553 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
-
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
-
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
-
Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together817 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Arrowroot
- Thickens the milk mixture so the finished ice cream is smooth and not icy.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the cream enriches.
- Thick cream
- Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream rich and creamy in texture.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point so it stays softer when frozen.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the frozen dessert.
The step that matters
Adding the lemon juice while partly frozen. Acid added to a fully liquid base can curdle the milk and cream proteins and thin the mixture. Adding it once partly frozen keeps the texture smooth and the flavour fresh.
Swap the arrowroot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, cream, sugar):
- Arrowrootthe original
- Potatofits about as well
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Asparagusfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cream, sugar. 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.
More ice cream recipes
You might also like
Lemon Cake228 recipes
Lemon Ice147 recipes
Lemon Sherbet103 recipes
Lemon Custard64 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.