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Philadelphia Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with milk or cream, arrowroot, egg whites, powdered sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Philadelphia Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk or cream in a large pot.

  2. Thicken the boiling milk with arrowroot.

  3. Stir in the powdered sugar until dissolved.

Finish and freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  2. Add vanilla extract to taste.

  3. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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. Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

Milk or cream
Provides the liquid base and richness that the rest of the custard-style mixture is built on.
Arrowroot
Thickens the boiling milk or cream so the base becomes body rather than thin liquid.
Egg whites
Whipped into the mixture to add lightness and airiness to the frozen texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the base and dissolves fully, adding softness to the frozen result.

The step that matters

Thicken the boiling milk with arrowroot. Arrowroot must be added to liquid that is already hot and stirred well, so it thickens evenly without clumping. Lumps left in the base will show in the frozen ice cream.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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