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Dessert

Coffee Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cream, milk, eggs, arrowroot, coffee, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Coffee Ice Cream

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 ↓

Coffee Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the arrowroot in ½ cup cold milk.

  2. Add the mixture to the well-beaten eggs.

  3. Pour a pint of milk, heated to boiling, over this mixture.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Freeze

  1. Add the cream.

  2. Put the mixture into the freezer and stir thoroughly.

  3. When it is partly frozen, add the coffee and beat well.

  4. Continue to freeze until fully set.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and thicken the custard base, giving the ice cream a rich, smooth body.
Arrowroot
Thickens the custard base so the ice cream stays smooth and resists icy crystals.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the ice cream creamy and tender on the tongue.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream soft enough to scoop.
Coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma throughout the frozen base.
Milk
Adds moisture and dilutes the custard, helping it cook to a smooth, pourable base.

The step that matters

Add the coffee when the mixture is partly frozen. Adding coffee at this point lets it mix in evenly while the base is still slushy. Beating breaks up ice crystals, so the coffee flavour spreads through and the texture stays smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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