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Dessert

Chocolate Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from heavy cream, sugar, chocolate, egg yolks, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Chocolate Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Mix the chocolate with the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the cream and sugar, then heat until boiling.

Finish and freeze

  1. Stir in the chocolate and egg yolk mixture until well combined.

  2. Add lemon flavoring to taste.

  3. Cool the mixture, then freeze it in an ice cream maker.

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. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

Heavy cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the base, adding richness and a custard-like smoothness.
Chocolate
Supplies the main flavor and some fat, adding depth and body to the base.

The step that matters

Combine the chocolate and egg yolk mixture. Stirring the yolks into hot cream must be done gently and fully, or the eggs can scramble into small lumps. Adding the yolk mixture to hot liquid slowly and stirring constantly keeps the base smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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