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Dessert

Aunt Parsons' Ice Cream

A homemade ice cream made with rich cream, eggs, sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, powdered ice, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Aunt Parsons' Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Scald the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir them into the hot cream.

  3. Sweeten the mixture with loaf sugar to your taste.

  4. Stir in the grated lemon peel while the mixture is still hot.

  5. Strain the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.

  6. Once cool, add enough lemon juice to achieve a pleasant acidity.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into a water-tight freezer.

  2. Layer powdered ice and coarse sea salt around the mixture until nearly full.

  3. Cover the freezer to exclude air and freeze for 4 to 5 hours.

  4. If the cream is good, it will not flake if not stirred during freezing.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Rich cream
Provides fat and body, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth, rich texture.
Eggs
Their proteins help thicken and enrich the base, adding structure and a creamier texture.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the base and also softens the freezing texture by lowering the freezing point.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the cream.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice after cooling. Acid added to hot cream can curdle the eggs and proteins, so the juice is stirred in only once the mixture has cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, 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.

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