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Dessert

Tutti Frutti

A frozen custard dessert made with milk, eggs, sugar, heavy cream, and chopped fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Tutti Frutti

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk almost to boiling.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the beaten eggs mixed with sugar.

  3. Beat the mixture together and return it to the heat.

  4. Boil for ten minutes, then let it cool.

Freeze

  1. Once cool, beat in the heavy cream and half freeze the mixture.

  2. Stir in the chopped fruit and freeze until firm.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard base and give the finished ice cream a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point so the ice cream stays softer.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a custard.
Heavy cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream creamier and less icy.
Mixed fruit
Adds flavour, colour and pieces of fruit throughout the frozen dessert.

The step that matters

Boil for ten minutes, then let it cool. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating or curdling leaves the custard grainy. Cooling it fully before adding cream keeps the base smooth and prevents the cream from melting or separating.

“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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