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Dessert

Ice Cream Made of Peanut Milk

A frozen dessert made from peanut milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Ice Cream Made of Peanut Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the peanut milk

  1. Grind the raw peanuts to a meal, not as fine as peanut butter.

  2. Add 3 cups of water to the peanut meal and beat thoroughly.

  3. Strain through two layers of cheesecloth, pressing out all the milk.

  4. Put the remaining contents into a bowl, pour on 1½ cups of water, beat thoroughly, and strain again.

  5. Cook the obtained milk in a double boiler for two hours or more.

Finish the custard

  1. Add 2 well-beaten eggs, 1 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and salt to taste to the milk.

  2. Stir the ingredients thoroughly and remove from the stove.

  3. Place the mixture in a pan of cold water to cool.

Freeze

  1. Once cool, it is ready to freeze.

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

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

  2. Peanut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Peanut + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Raw peanuts
Provide the base flavor and body of the milk, extracted from the ground meal.
Eggs
Add richness and help the mixture set and thicken when cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Water
Extracts milk from the peanut meal during the repeated beating and straining.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk in a double boiler. Gentle indirect heat avoids scorching and curdling the eggs. The mixture should be cooked slowly and stirred so it thickens evenly without sticking.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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