Skip to main content
Dessert

Brown-bread Ice Cream

A dessert made by freezing cream with sugar and folded with toasted brown bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Brown-bread Ice Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the bread

  1. Toast the brown bread in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C).

  2. Roll and sift the toasted bread through a fine sieve.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, heat 1 cup of cream over medium heat; add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  2. Remove from heat and add the remaining cream; let it cool.

  3. Once cool, freeze according to standard ice cream freezing directions.

Finish and rest

  1. When frozen, fold in the sifted brown bread, remove the dasher, and re-pack the ice cream.

  2. Set aside for 2 hours before serving.

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

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

  2. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Boston brown bread
Toasted and sifted, it supplies the distinctive toasty, malty flavour of the ice cream.
Cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.

The step that matters

Cooling the base before freezing. The custard base must be fully cool before freezing; warm mixtures freeze slowly into large ice crystals, producing a grainy, icy texture.

“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 brown bread ice cream recipes

Boston 3 See all 14 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes