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Dessert

Chocolate Ice Cream

A chocolate ice cream made by melting chocolate, adding salt, sugar, boiling water, milk, and vanilla, then cooling and freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 chocolate base

  1. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler.

  2. Add the salt and sugar, stirring until the sugar is melted.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water, then remove from heat.

Finish and freeze

  1. Stir in the scalding hot milk and vanilla.

  2. Cool the mixture and freeze as usual.

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

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

  4. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, 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

Chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavour and rich body in the base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer by lowering the freezing point.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that freezes into the ice cream's body.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out and enhances the chocolate flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water. Adding the hot water slowly to the melted chocolate and sugar helps it blend smoothly. Pouring it in all at once can cause the chocolate to seize and turn grainy.

“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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