Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Ice Cream

A chocolate ice cream made by heating milk, adding chocolate, cornstarch, egg, vanilla, and cream, then freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler, reserving a little.

  2. Rub the chocolate smooth in the boiling water and add it to the milk with the sugar.

  3. Rub the cornstarch into the reserved milk until smooth.

  4. Combine the cornstarch mixture with the chocolate milk and stir well.

  5. Add the beaten egg and vanilla, then mix in the cream.

Freeze

  1. Freeze 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.

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

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

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients thicken and flavor.
Cornstarch
Thickens the base as it heats, giving the ice cream body and a smoother texture.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the custard, adding body to the base.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream richer and softer on the tongue.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream scoopable.
Baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the ice cream.

The step that matters

Combine the cornstarch mixture with the chocolate milk and stir well.. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed in cold liquid before heating, then stirred while the mixture heats, or it will form lumps instead of thickening the base evenly.

“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.

More chocolate ice cream recipes

Cake 5Candy 3 See all 177 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes