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Dessert

Made of Milk

A milk and egg ice cream made by mixing boiling milk with beaten eggs, then adding cold milk, sugar, flavoring, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and arrowroot work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Made of Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil half of the milk.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  3. Slowly pour the boiling milk into the eggs while stirring continuously to make ice cream.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add the cold milk, sugar, and flavoring to the strained mixture.

Thicken with arrowroot

  1. In a separate pot, mix a little milk with the arrowroot.

  2. Boil the remaining two quarts of milk.

  3. Stir the arrowroot mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Add the remaining two quarts of cold milk, sugar, and flavoring.

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 + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Set into a rich custard when gently heated, giving the base body and structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and keeps the ice cream moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture so it scoops more easily.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the milk when boiled, adding body and smoothness.

The step that matters

Slowly pouring the boiling milk into the eggs. If the hot milk goes in too fast or without constant stirring, the eggs can scramble. Gradual tempering warms the eggs gently so their proteins thicken evenly into a smooth custard.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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