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Dessert

Vanilla Ice Cream

A custard-based vanilla ice cream made with milk, cream, eggs, sugar, and optional butter and double cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Vanilla Ice Cream

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Vanilla Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk, saving enough to mix with the flour to make a smooth paste.

  2. Slowly add the flour mixture to the scalded milk and cook in a double boiler until thoroughly cooked with no raw taste.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten eggs, sugar, and salt.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Flavor and freeze

  1. When cool, add the cream and flavor with vanilla, making it slightly stronger than desired as some flavor will freeze out.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter into the mixture.

  3. Add ½ pint of double cream, adjusting sugar as needed.

  4. Freeze the mixture according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard base as it cooks.
Eggs
Enrich the base and help it set to a creamy texture when cooked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs enrich.
Thin cream
Adds fat that makes the ice cream rich and smooth-textured.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour mixture until no raw taste remains. Flour starch must be fully cooked in the hot milk to thicken properly and remove its raw floury taste. Undercooked starch leaves a pasty flavor and weak texture in the finished ice cream.

“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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